Juntos takes innovative customer engagement platform to Africa

Juntos today announced their partnership with mobile money provider company Tigo Pesa in Tanzania, to provide new account support to Tigo Pesa customers through the Juntos innovative engagement platform. The partnership is the first step on a plan to expand the Juntos platform to markets throughoutAfrica.

"Tigo Pesa has established itself as one of Africa's leading mobile money services and proved to be the ideal partner for our debut inAfrica," said Ben Knelman, CEO and co-founder of Juntos. "Through this partnership, Juntos is looking to help Tigo establish long-lasting relationships with its customers, increasing levels of usage in newly opened accounts and loyalty among current users."

"We are excited to partner with Juntos on this digital innovation, piloting this free service for our customers," said Ruan Swanepoel, head of Tigo Pesa.

Juntos designs mobile personal financial management tools that empower newly banked individuals to develop new financial habits and build confidence in their financial lives. These tools are designed by experts in financial behavior change and user-centric design and are delivered to users via a mass customized, automated, two-way SMS conversation. Juntos continues to demonstrate success: in a partnership in Colombia, the Juntos group had a 33 percent higher active client rate compared to the control.

"Omidyar Network is extremely proud of supporting Juntos' journey in enhancing engagement of mobile money users across Latin America and now in Africa," said Arjuna Costa, investment partner at Omidyar Network. "Juntos technology is addressing the last mile in the financial inclusion effort, which is really helping consumers to better engage with providers and take advantage of financial products to improve their lives."

Tigo Tanzania is known to be among the most forward-looking providers in Africa, becoming the first telecom to offer international money transfer with currency conversion and the first to offer free Facebook in Kiswahili. Africa has been at the forefront of financial inclusion through mobile money; there are 146 million registered mobile money accounts in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, only 61.9 million of those are active. In late 2013, the government of Tanzania pledged to increase the level of Tanzanian adults with formal access to financial services to 75 percent in the next six years.

The expansion to Africa has been made possible through a recent round of investments closed in June of last year. Juntos raised US$3 million in its Series A financing, led by Aligned Partners and Omidyar Network.