Meet our Digital Financial Services Innovation Prize Winners: Catalyzing Change in Eswatini Through Digital Tools • Grameen Foundation

Meet our Digital Financial Services Innovation Prize Winners: Catalyzing Change in Eswatini Through Digital Tools

Posted on 05/11/2022

Meet the DFS Innovation Prize Winners

Imbita Finance Trust

With over 30 years of experience, local microfinance organization Imbita Swaziland Women’s Finance Trust is the leading financial service provider for rural women in Eswatini, with over 7,000 low-income clients receiving savings, loan, insurance, and training products, and over 30,000 clients organized into women’s self-help groups. Imbita was founded by a group of Eswatini women in 1991 to eliminate the constraints that continue to trap Emaswati, particularly women, in the poverty cycle. In a country where only 8% of citizens and 7% of entrepreneurs have accessed credit from banks, Imbita is the leading provider of financial services to underbanked rural women. The majority of the women served by Imbita operate micro-businesses with just 1-2 employees, and operate their businesses directly from their home.

Imbita fills a vital need in the Eswati market by offering low-cost, customer-centered savings, loan, and insurance products to underbanked rural women. But Imbita’s reach is limited by the high costs of doing business.

Through the DFS Innovation Prize, Imbita is collaborating with MTN Eswatini to digitize their savings and loan repayments, and launch an entirely digital Quick Loan for their customers. Digitizing repayments will make it much easier for clients to access the world of Imbita’s services quickly and easily from their phones, without traveling to the organization’s branch offices. Digitization will also cut Imbita’s costs of doing business and enable Imbita to scale their services to additional clients at minimal costs.

Local fintech Digimage started up in 2014 and provides a range of digital solutions that meet the needs of businesses and end-users in Eswatini. Despite being a small business of young tech entrepreneurs, Digimage has been recognized by and managed to build strategic partnerships with many government and industry players since 2020. These include the Central Bank, Taiwan ICDF, and MTN Mobile Money.

Digimage has developed two promising digital financial services (DFS) products with the potential to improve access to financial services for rural men and women in Eswatini. The first product is called ePayNet, and the second is called iCredit. Both ePayNet and iCredit use the power of digital financial services to increase the impact and enhance the effectiveness of local women’s community savings and loan groups on women’s financial lies.

Up to now, ePayNet has only been available on smartphones. But it is essential to reach lower-income rural people, who often lack Internet access. That is why through the DFS Innovation Prize, Digimage is modifying both of their apps to work on non-Internet enabled phones. So what does that mean? Any rural woman with a simple Nokia, Tecno or iTel phone will be able to save with her savings group or SACCO, repay loans and request a quick loan quickly and easily from the convenience of her own home.