The Sosa Brothers drive me nuts! Mostly because I’m jealous. Really. They are visionary, they are charismatic, they’re successful, they are creative, they live in Austin, they have the word “Lab” in their company name, and they are committed to improving the lives of millions of people who have less…
Small Business and the Underbanked
Seeing the announcement that Sequoia Capital invested $27.5 million in Jack Dorsey’s Square, reminded me of the fact that many of those interested in the underbanked are stuck thinking about the consumer. Well, this “consumer” is a person fully capable of economic production, by means of a job and…
Rent in credit report!!!!
This is a big-deal announcement: “As of December 2010, Experian® will include positive rental payment data as part of a consumer’s credit file.” Sound dry? Not so: My numbers are old, but before the recession 50-odd million Americans had no or thin credit reports. So, if you’re an immigrant…
Tactile Finances
A good reason for being “underbanked” is that being banked means creating a much more abstract relationship with your money. It appears on a screen, or by a text, subject to many words in legal agreements, incurring penalties magically, and disappearing for days after you bring it physically to the…
What Could Make Mobile Work
While the only successfully scaled mobile payments solution for the underbanked that I’m aware of operates in Kenya, there must be ways to overcome barriers to successful deployments here in the US (or in other places around the world). Here are some hurdles that I perceive being in the way…
Underbanked Market Size Increases in Recession
According to the NVCA financial services represents around 2% of all venture capital investments, in dollars committed. Financial services is small potatoes. Even smaller is the sub-segment of consumer finance for the underbanked. Invisible to most. A charity case or the land of feckless predatory players. Quite different, in reality. …
Avoiding Financial Missteps
By Josh Sledge, CFSI Innovation Analyst At times, I can be almost comically absentminded. On a number of occasions, I’ve prepared a letter for the mail, stuffed it into my bag as I leave for work…and then proceeded to walk by every mailbox in my neighborhood without remembering to drop…
Is Remote Deposit Capture the Killer App for Mobile?
I’ve been poo-pooing mobile payments for the underbanked for quite a while, much to the chagrin of everyone who believes in technology or has half a brain. And of course, it all does look so good: underbanked people, globally, actually own mobile phones, actually use them, and the phone could…
“We, as America…”
“We, as America, need to make sure [people] stay in the tent, so to speak, but also make sure that we can get a fair return for our shareholders at the same time.” – Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America on CNBC I assume he meant, “we, as Bank…
Zestfully Clean
You’re not fully clean unless you’ve tried to get a ZestCash loan, except you won’t have any luck, unless you live in Utah. Former Googler Douglas Merrill and former Cap-Onener Shawn Budde introduced ZestCash today. It’s the latest entrant in the anti-payday online short-term lending space, following suit to Wonga,…