Author: Slava Solodkiy

Fenqile is planning a U.S. initial public offering that could raise about $600 million. The Shenzhen-based startup, founded by former Tencent executive Xiao Wenjie, could list as soon as this year. Fenqile, which means “Happy Installment Payments” in Chinese, targets university students who are eager to buy consumer products yet can’t afford to pay in full. Fenqile, which sells products ranging from laptop computers to concert tickets, has more than 10 million registered users and had 10 billion yuan of revenue in 2015. Selling shares would give Fenqile, which is backed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global, more funding…

Online-lending service for students SoFi (Social Finance Inc.) is close to raising about $500 million in a funding round expected to be led by private equity firm SilverLake Partners to bolster the expansion of its online-lending businesses and personal financial services. The investment round should include several Asian investors like Japan’s SoftBank and others. The new international group will purchase SoFi’s loans as well as take an equity stake. The fundraising round values SoFi at $4.3 billion, higher than its previous valuation of $3.2 billion. Closely held SoFi started out in 2011 by refinancing student loans. In 2015, San Francisco-based…

Pawnshops that moved online has also shown interesting business strategies. And it can be observed with two extremely different types of audiences. British Borro, who attracted £5,6M provides online secured loans through a customer’s luxury assets, targeting the top 10% of the population. In opposite, Philippines’ PawnHero provides small and quick loans to subprime borrowers, secured by assets that can be found on Alibaba, so in case of unpaid — it can be sold back on Alibaba. Borro is quite special balance sheet lender in this niche. Despite the fact that its founded in UK, it’s main operations are coming from USA.…

Facebook is currently considering acquiring mobile money giant M-Pesa in Kenya. One month ago Visa payments network introduced a mobile-phone application to enable cashless transactions in Kenya too. The mVisa app will initially facilitate transactions for people with accounts at four banks. Africa had 557 million mobile-phone users at the end of 2015, according to the GSM Association. The company estimates 84 million of them still pay by cash. About 1,500 merchants have signed up already and Kenyan lenders with units in the region want to introduce the system in neighboring nations. Visa is in talks to roll out the…