Access to credit is a key link between economic opportunity and economic outcome. Without the ability to obtain credit in times of need, businesses are harder to start and run, apartments are harder to rent, and emergencies can become disasters.

Until now, consumers in emerging markets have had limited access to credit in any form. Even when credit is technically available, it often requires days or weeks of form-filling and waiting. Mines.io provides an end-to-end platform where consumers can apply for a loan through a mobile phone, be instantly approved, and receive funds within minutes. This is made possible by a proprietary credit scoring system, which uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze multiple data sources and cost-effectively predict default risk for both banked and unbanked consumers.

Invented in Stanford University by Nigeria-born Professor Kunle Olukotun .

Kunle Olukotun has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University for the last 20 years and is an expert in parallel hardware and software systems.

They just received seed funding from Fintech Collective.

MoneyLion is an online lending company that specializes in consumer personal loans. It also provides free credit monitoring, personal financial management tools, and a unique rewards program that encourages good financial actions that can be used to redeem gift cards. In a piece in TechCrunch, the value in this startup is explained.

In a financial context, people are really bad at anticipating future frustration. If I buy an Apple Watch with my credit card now, my brain doesn’t want me to be able to imagine the bill in my mailbox. Customers check their credit score on MoneyLion an average of 3.9 times a month. This degree of transparency makes people sweat in the short-run but reduces the likelihood of bad decision making that induces long-term elevated stress.

The platform also leverages data to recommend loans when they are most needed. If spending patterns appear incongruent with prior months, MoneyLion can suggest a small loan to smooth things over. A user can receive overdraft warnings within the app and take a $200 advance in about 15 minutes. Tim Hong, one of the key behavioral architects of the platform, wants MoneyLion to dream big.

This product can save one stress in Nigeria if it can be built. But of course, the first is having the ability to track the expenses by linking all to BVN (bank verification number).

Alphabet (Google) is boosting its finance chops by appointing Roger Ferguson, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and CEO of TIAA, as it’s 12th director.

Mr. Ferguson is Alphabet’s latest nod to Wall Street since hiring former Morgan Stanley executive Ruth Porat as its chief financial officer last year, a move seen as an effort to improve relations with investors. Shortly after Ms. Porat’s arrival, she helped lead a restructuring that split the core business of Google from a series of side projects like a research lab and internet provider dubbed “other bets.” The new parent company, Alphabet, has since given investors more details on the company’s finances.

Continuing with the latest trend of enterprises focused on capitalizing the massive interest in blockchain, IBM recently opened a tech garage in Soho New York dedicated to the development of blockchain tech. Cloud providers – Amazon, Microsoft and now IBM are deploying blockchain environments for both developers and SMEs. This is great news for the expansion of blockchain and making it “mainstream”, but is this more beneficial for the large enterprises or for the developers themselves?

Earlier this month, IBM announced the massive Watson Centre at Marina Boy in Singapore. Designed to house 5,000 computer scientists in the Asian-Pacific region, the location also included a new IBM Garage. Then, just last week IBM announced that Mizuho Financial had successfully tested a digital currency-based blockchain settlement system created at the newly opened IBM Garage in Tokyo.

Vantage Capital, Africa’s largest mezzanine fund manager, announced today that it has disbursed the second and final tranche of a R250 million ($16.6 million) expansion capital facility to Vumatel. The funds will be used for the on-going expansion of Vumatel’s fibre-to-the-home (“FTTH”) network in a growing number of Johannesburg and Cape Town suburbs.

The Vantage mezzanine facility was structured in two equal tranches of R125 million ($8.3 million), to be drawn by Vumatel upon the achievement of certain operational and financial milestones by the company. Since concluding the transaction in April this year, Vumatel has rapidly expanded its network and has exceeded the milestones required to drawdown both tranches of the R250 million facility from Vantage.

Vumatel was established in 2014 to supply affordable high-speed fibre optic network connectivity to homes in South Africa. Vumatel began deploying its open access FTTH network in October 2014 in Parkhurst, a Johannesburg suburb. Since then, the company has rapidly expanded its network to cover 22 suburbs, reaching more than 33,000 homes. Driven by strong customer demand for reliable high speed internet, Vumatel has a robust pipeline of additional suburbs for further network deployment.

Despite having one of the highest GDP per capita ratios in Africa, South Africa’s average broadband speed is one of the lowest on the continent. Vumatel was founded to address this large deficit in high-speed broadband services for residential users in South Africa. The company contributes to greater high-speed broadband adoption through the deployment of an open access fibre optic network. “Open access” means that the Vumatel network can be used as a platform by multiple internet service providers, such that customers can benefit from a variety of choices to suit their needs.

Vumatel’s founding shareholders include Niel Schoeman, Johan Pretorius and Richard Came – successful industry veterans who have been key players in establishing and operating several well-known telecommunications and technology businesses including Dimension Data, Dark Fibre Africa, Conduct Telecom and the Birchman Group. Together, the team is especially well suited to scale the Vumatel network and to meet the growing demand for access to high-speed residential broadband in South Africa.