Technology

Asiafintech scene is poised to get a little larger after Jumo, a company that offers loans to the unbanked in Africa, revealed plans to expand into the continent. To get the ball rolling,Jumo has opened an office in Singapore to lead the way and landed a massive $52 million investment led by banking giant Goldman Sachs to fuel the growth.

The new round takes Jumo to $90 million raised from investors. While Goldman is the lead — and standout name — the round also saw participation from existing backers that includeProparco — which is attached to the French Development Agency — Finnfund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital, and LeapFrog Investments.

Jumo launched in 2014 and it specializes in social impact financial products. That meansloans and saving options for those who sit outside of the existing banking system, and particularly small businesses. To date, it claims to have helped nine million consumers across its six markets in Africa and originated over $700 million in loans. The company, which has some 350 staff across 10 offices in Africa, Europe and Asia, was part of GoogleLaunchpad accelerator last year and it is led by CEOAndrew Watkins-Ball, who has close to two decades in finance and investing.

Watkins-Ball told TechCrunch that he believes Jumoexperience working in Africa sets it up perfectly to offer similar services in markets across Asia.

&We grew up in a very tough play yard,& he said in an interview. &We built our initial success inTanzania which is probably one of the hardest [financial] markets in the world. A lot of these environments [in Asia] look more attractive.&

Unlike the West, where challengers are trying to unseat banks, fintech startups in emerging markets work with the existing system. That isn&t some cop-out, it actually makes perfect sense. Banks simply aren&t equipped to deal with customers seeking small loans in the hundreds of U.S. dollar bracket.

Jumo CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball believes his companywork in Africa is ideal preparation for its expansion into Asia

Financially, the returns aren&t there from these customers and it doesn&t make sense for banks to invest resources sounding out a prospective loan. Even if they wanted to, they couldn&t vet these would-be customers, though. Many emerging markets simply don&t have the formalized credit checking systems that exist in the West, while many of the unbanked (or ‘less banked&) consumers wouldn&t even show up if they did due to a range of factors.

Thatwhere a new approach is needed. Fintech startups essentially act like a funnel. They manage the customer acquisition and retention, develop systems to assess credit based on alternative signals and, over time, build up a customer profile that reduces credit risk. That suits banks because they don&t need to handle the nitty-gritty and, when it works well, the startups bring them larger enough volumes of small loans that are a worthwhile opportunity for financial institutions.

Just looking at recent funding deals, the model is evident in markets like India — where ZestMoney pulled in funds last month — and Southeast Asia, where Experian backed fintech startup C88.

Watkins-Ball said Jumo is aiming to do the same having already proven its model in Africa. He acknowledged that a number of startups are also tackling the problem and welcomed the increase competition and growth potential across the fintech and micro-financing space.

&We&ve offered services to millions of new customers who weren&t part of the banking ecosystems,& he explained.&Essentially we grow the addressable market for banks.&

Already, Jumo has begun offering services in Pakistan and it has plans to open up in more markets in Asia, althoughWatkins-Ball isn&t saying which ones or when right now. But, in addition to proving its model, he believes that Jumo has already shown it can adapt to new markets.

&The differences between countries like Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia are as great as those between India, China and Indonesia,& he told TechCrunch. &So we&ve had to learn to use ourplatform, which we built to be flexible, and localize in order to fit the customer.&

Thatbacked up by Goldman Sachs executive directorJules Frebault, who said in a statement: &Therean immense opportunityacross Africa and beyond for Jumo to build on their successful track record developing digitalmarketplace infrastructure to offer mobile subscribers access to relevant financial products.&

In addition to Asian expansions, Jumonew capital will also go towards expanding its current selection of productions in Africa. In particular,Watkins-Ball says the company is working to partner with more banks and it plans to introduce &new generations& of saving products.

While it isn&t taking its foot off the pedal in Africa, he said Jumo will likely devote the majority of its resources to the Asia expansion plan. That&ll make Jumo a very notable addition to a fintech scene that is already showing significant potential across the Asian region.

Your Twitter prayers are answered! Well, maybe not the prayers about harassment or the ones about an edit tweet button, but your other prayers.

Today in a series of tweets, the company announced that it had heard the cries of its various disgruntled users and will bring back a form of the pure chronological timeline that users can opt into. Twitter first took an interest in a more algorithmic timeline three-ish years agoand committed to it in 2016.

Some users were under the impression that they were living that algo-free life already by toggling off the &Show the best Tweets first& option in the account settings menu. Unfortunately for all of us, unchecking this box didn&t revert Twitter to ye olde pure chronological timeline so much as it removed some of the more prominent algorithmic bits that would otherwise be served to users first thing. Users regularly observed non-chronological timeline behaviors even with the option toggled off.

As Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour elaborated, &We&re working on making it easier for people to control their Twitter timeline, including providing an easy switch to see the most recent tweets.&

Nostalgic users who want regular old Twitter back can expect to see the feature in testing &in the coming weeks.&

We&re ready to pull the switch, just tell us when.

By this point, you should all know the drill. Another day, another massive tariff from the Trump administration.

After rumors the past few weeks that the president was considering expanding tariffs to another $267 billion worth of imported goods from China, the administration announced today that it would expand them merely to another $200 billion worth of goods, which has the convenience of being a nice round number.

In a White House statement, the president announced a 10 percent tariff to be implemented by September 24, which will then increase to 25 percent at the start of the new year.

&For months, we have urged China to change these unfair practices, and give fair and reciprocal treatment to American companies. We have been very clear about the type of changes that need to be made, and we have given China every opportunity to treat us more fairly. But, so far, China has been unwilling to change its practices,& the statement said.

Furthermore, the president said that any retaliatory action by China would result in immediate tariffs action and an expansion of tariffs to $267 billion worth of Chinese goods. Among the options that Chinese policy circles have been mulling is putting in place an export ban on critical components in U.S. supply chains, which could massively damage the ability of manufacturers and assemblers from building their products.

Chinaoptions for direct retaliation are limited, due to the sheer amount of exports China sends to the United States. China imports less from America than the value of goods included in these tariffs, and can no longer match them dollar-to-dollar.

One major question at the heart of the tariffs is whether they will actually prove effective in making U.S. companies more competitive against their Chinese counterparts. The Wall Street Journal published a deep-dive analysis of that topic, arguing that the tariffs are pushing China to move to more advanced industries faster — in effect encouraging China to be more competitive with the U.S., rather than less.

The U.S. Trade Representative, whose office is in charge of determining precisely what products the tariffs will apply to, provided a final list of products that will be hit by tariffs. Of the thousands originally listed in draft tariffs a few weeks ago, several hundred product categories were removed (which likely moved the final value figure lower).

From a release by the office: &Included among the products removed from the proposed list are certain consumer electronics products such as smart watches and Bluetooth devices; certain chemical inputs for manufactured goods, textiles and agriculture; certain health and safety products such as bicycle helmets, and child safety furniture such as car seats and playpens.&

So if you play in a playpen with an Apple Watch while wearing a bike helmet, you are likely in luck.

U.S. companies have massively expanded their lobbying operations to counter the tariffs in recent months, although those lobbying dollars don&t seem to be translating into a less heated set of policies.