Chapter 7: Democratization Of Banking Services In Emerging Markets: Mexico

Nowadays, the amount of FinTech related investments in ASEAN has jumped 45% to USD 366m in 2017 compared to USD 252m in 2016.¹ In emerging markets, it is particularly, interesting to observe the strong correlation between mobile-based innovation and FinTech market absorption, for example, already today more than half of the population across emerging and developing countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon have access to smart phones. The adoption of smartphone is driven by demographics of a growing middle class².

In Africa, smartphones have been a key component promoting financial inclusion. Smartphones have provided access and widened FinTech applications. For example, in Kenya’s M-PESA allows money transfer and in Tanzania, a mobile phone system has been used for initial public offering subscriptions which led to doubling investors subscription.