CDP Institute

Absa Bank Kenya, a subsidiary of South Africa’s Absa Group, has launched a WhatsApp banking solution called “Abby” to assist users in making basic transactions. According to the Bank, customers can use the service for bill payments, balance enquiry, inter-account transfers, as well as transfers between bank accounts and M-Pesa/Airtel money.

Kenyan fintech startup Paylend, which is helping MSMEs better record data and access loans, is conducting surveys in Tanzania and Nigeria ahead of beta tests in those markets.

Dovetail, a Sydney-based software company that enables teams to make better decisions through deep customer understanding, today announced that it has raised $5 million AUD to further scale the reach of its customer research platform.

More than 30 per cent increase in revenue off email marketing, lifts in customer lifetime value and omnichannel marketing are wins from a marketing and customer technology investment.

Citi Australia is getting into the buy now, pay later (BNPL) market with its new product called Spot, which is being issued by company subsidiary Diners and will officially launch in October.

Online shopping has outpaced traditional retail in the Asia Pacific as more people turn to e-commerce. Online shoppers who shop ‘a few times a month’ regularly are now outpacing their offline counterparts by 42% vs 31%. Those who shop online ‘once every few months’ leapfrog offline shoppers by 66%.

AirAsia’s e-wallet arm BigPay has secured approximately US$100 million in financing from South Korean conglomerate, SK Group. The company said that the funding will be used to further its mission to become the leading challenger bank in Southeast Asia, with plans to build out its offerings, accelerate product development and scale.

In this very different time, retailers are trying to do whatever they can to survive as more shoppers move to the online world to purchase products and services. While having an online channel is necessary for today’s retailers, many transactions still happen in their physical stores. Hence, retailers must leverage their data collected from both the online and offline worlds. The retailers that successfully do so will stay relevant in this era, as they can seamlessly provide an omnichannel retail experience to their customers.

InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding. Until this year, the startup operated only in São Paulo. In the first half of this year, it launched operations in eight new cities, and is now also live in Campinas, Curitiba, Joinville, Santos, Brasília, Goiânia, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

The distribution of the marketing budget is changing due to digital acceleration, according to industry analysis firm IDC. In Latin America, that means a change of priorities for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). Sixty-four percent of the CMOs surveyed in the study responded that their top priority today is increasing the quantity and quality of their leads.

As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everyday life in Latin America, the region saw a rapid increase in the adoption of digital services. While this digital transformation has expanded access to financial, medical and educational services to people across the region, it has also increased privacy and cybersecurity concerns, driving the need for governments and companies to ensure adequate protections.

Latin America is the fastest growing eCommerce region in the world. The pandemic has caused shoppers in this region to spend 36.7% more online in 2020, with 52 million people buying online for the first time.