There is an interesting juxtaposition in Africa. On the one hand you have incredibly successful mobile payment initiatives like M-Pesa in Kenya and Paga in Nigeria. On the other hand you have most of the 1.1 billion people that are incredibly underserved when it comes to financial services. Small business funding may be one of the most underserved segments of all.

Before there was such a thing as fintech, before peer to peer lending was invented, a group of young executives had the crazy idea to start an eBay for money in the UK. Originally named Rialto (a bridge linking two market squares in Venice) the company that would become Zopa needed to raise some money in early 2004.

Short term lending has a bad reputation in some circles, often deservedly so. But there are tens of millions of consumers in middle America who are non-prime but still have credit needs. They don’t qualify for a loan at any of the prime online lenders like LendingClub, Prosper or Marcus. So where do they go? We don’t want them going to a payday lender or using some other predatory loan product. Thankfully, there are other options.

Banking as a service is a concept that is still in its infancy. There are a few companies today offering different white label services for banks and even consumer brands to enable them to offer different banking services. BankMobile has put their stake in the ground here with their fascinating new partnership with T-Mobile.

Small businesses across the country are still not getting all the capital they need. Many small business owners do not see banks as a viable funding alternative either from a time or ease of use perspective. So, they are turning to online lending platforms in record numbers. When it comes to longer term (three to five years) loans the online lending leader is clearly Funding Circle.

A travesty of today’s financial system is how easy it is to launder money. Despite billions of dollars in expense and tens of thousands of people attacking this problem banks stop around 1% of money from financial crime. Incremental change is not going to help here, we need a new approach.

It is one of the great challenges of our time. Despite low unemployment and a booming economy there is still a large sector of the population that is struggling financially. As I wrote earlier this week there is a new breed of entrepreneurs attacking this problem but they need significant amounts of capital to get off the ground.

Ten years ago there was nowhere to go to compare consumer finance products via an independent site. Whether it was credit cards, personal loans, saving accounts you were pretty much on your own when it came to research. Today it is very different.

The debt settlement space has not had a great reputation. But there are situations where it truly is the best option for consumers who are in over their heads financially. But for consumers going through the debt settlement process it can be long multi-year road to go down where your credit remains in bad shape. 

The fintech world will be gathering in San Francisco next week for LendIt Fintech USA 2019. To help you navigate the show I chatted with my two LendIt colleagues, Todd Anderson and Ryan Lichtenwald, who have been working with me for the past several months on the agenda for the show. We cover the different components of the show and share how to get the most out of your experience at LendIt Fintech this year.