Israeli fintech co Fido raises $30m for African expansion

• Published date: 21 June 2022
• Publication title: Globes (Rishon LeZion, Israel)

Fido was founded in 2016 by president Nadav Topolski (chairman of Reshet Channel 13), Tomer Edry and Nir Zepkowitz to make financial services more accessible in locations where there are few banks. The company identified that the absence of access to financial services as a major obstacle for entrepreneurship and economic growth in developing countries in Africa. Fido claims that in those countries the banking systems are complicated, slow, bureaucratic and inefficient meaning that few people have access to basic financial services like obtaining loans, savings and payments. Fido is attempting to change all this through automating the customer experience and will soon launch new products to help customers improve their economic and financial management

Fido CEO Alon Eitan said, "We are building a new financial culture in Africa. We are not only talking about accessibility to financial services but also making them better - faster, simpler and transparent, and that is only the start."

Fido has built an automatic banking platform (based on machine learning models) with unique risk management models, which process hundreds of thousands of data points in real time with credit insights as well as estimating risks and identifying fraud. These enable immediate credit decisions to be made even if customers have no previous financial records or access to banks. The app is even available in regions with no bank branches. In addition, Fido will work in the future to instruct customers in keeping their credit record over time...