Absa targets African millennials with Hello Soda partnership
Absa says Hello Soda for greater big data
Absa Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays Africa, has partnered with multilingual text analytics and big data firm, Hello Soda, as it looks to tap into the millennial market.
The bank says it wants to make sense of unstructured social data to better understand its consumer base. According to Absa, Hello Soda provides new ways for individuals to verify their identity and gain access to credit. This includes millennial customers, who may not be able to provide utility bills or paper bank statements when applying for a loan, for example.
Pieter Vorster, chief data officer at Barclays Africa, says it is aiming at the “currently unbanked communities”.
James Blake, CEO at Hello Soda, adds that its products “provide the means for individuals that may not be covered by traditional credit data”.
Absa and Hello Soda say they are undergoing a proof of concept to “boost financial inclusion” with consumers in Africa.
Hello Soda is headquartered in Manchester, UK, with offices in Austin, Texas and Bangkok. Its software solution Profile uses analytics techniques including psycholinguistics and artificial intelligence (AI) to offer consumer insights.
It was founded in 2013, and the company says Profile is now used by over 70 clients in five continents for ID verification, fraud, financial inclusion, and personalisation.
