MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: La Fructueuse of Togo Rolls Out Dzinyefa, Connecting Microfinance Accounts to Flooz, T-Money Mobile Money Services

La Fructueuse, a cooperative microfinance institution (MFI) located in the Togolese city of Lomé, recently established a service allowing its customers to use mobile phones to access funds and information about their accounts. The new service, which is called Dzinyefa, allows users to see their balance and transaction history. It also allows them to move money between their La Fructueuse accounts and their accounts with the mobile money providers Flooz and T-Money. Users also can sign up for SMS (text messaging) notifications of transactions. All of these services work with feature phones as well as smartphones. La Fructueuse, which has seven branches and approximately 33,000 customers, offers services such as money transfers, credit and savings. The Luxembourgish NGO ADA supported the development of Dzinyefa via its Digital Finance Initiative.

Founded in 1994 as Appui au Développement Autonome, ADA aims to reduce poverty by investing in and otherwise supporting microfinance institutions in the Americas, Asia and Africa. As of June 2020, ADA managed loans totaling EUR 28 million (USD 33 million) outstanding to 54 microfinance institutions in 25 nations. It created the Digital Finance Initiative in 2017 to help MFIs to “define and to implement their digital strategy… [and] to improve their financial and social performances.”

By Adhya Singh, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

ADA press release
https://www.ada-microfinance.org/en/our-projects/fintech-digital-finance#fructueuse

La Fructueuse homepage
https://www.la-fructueuse.com/

ADA homepage
https://www.ada-microfinance.org/

ADA reports
https://www.ada-microfinance.org/en/about-ada

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