LAHORE (Web Desk) – An independent panel of judges assessed all entries and Telenor’s Easypaisa is among the final six entries. The winners will be selected in three categories: technology, education and operational effectiveness. Apart from that, there will be an overall winner as well as a People’s Choice Winner.
Telenor’s EasyPaisa, a mobile banking service, was launced in 2009 after Telenor collaborated with Tameer Micro Finance Bank. Right now, it has over 60,000 retail outlets across the country. It offers financial services and health insurance to more than 6 million people.
The competition was open for non-profits and for-profit ventures and focused on the Asia Pacific region. Participation simply required a short video proposal that showed how a company’s solutions were helping solve the issue of financial access for poor people, propakistani citied.
EasyPaisa is available to all mobile phone owners in Pakistan and that’s significant because while mobile penetration rate is over 70%, only 15% of the population has a bank account, EasyPaisa is the excellent example of branch-less banking in the country.
Other participants include:
Shanghai F-road Commercial Services, which is making mobile banking accessible to the rural folk of China.
Kiva, which is one of the first crowdfunding platforms for microfinance in the world
BRAC, a rural development organization founded in Bangladesh.
Ekphatthana Microfinance Institution, which reaches out to children in rural Laos to teach them finance.
Going to School, which is an NGO that teaches entrepreneurial skills to low-income children in India through books and moving pictures.
The winners will be announced on June 30.
