PayPal Stories Archive

 

Today, PayPal is taking another step to advance the democratization of money by announcing the global expansion of our relationship with Village Capital to support social impact innovators who are making financial services more accessible to low-income individuals, families and small businesses.

 

Millions of people remain underserved by the global financial system. Achieving our vision of delivering more affordable, convenient and secure financial options for underserved individuals, families and small businesses will take an entire ecosystem of partners – private sector, public sector and nonprofit organizations – to work together in new ways. We’re building deep relationships across the entire spectrum of players to help improve the management and movement of money for all, and our growing relationship with Village Capital further demonstrates this commitment.  

 

Village Capital finds, trains and funds social impact entrepreneurs developing critical agriculture, education, energy, financial services and health solutions for underserved populations worldwide. Since 2009, they’ve supported over 500 startup ventures with individualized mentorship, access to investor and partner networks and support through their award-winning curriculum.

 

The first-of-its-kind collaboration with PayPal will help approximately 40 additional social impact FinTech start-up ventures make measurable progress toward increasing financial participation for underserved populations in Latin America, the United States, and India. Over the next two years, we expect the ventures we support to have real impact – we anticipate that they’ll create jobs and work to empower households and small businesses in communities worldwide to participate in the financial system. To help empower their success, PayPal employees in each market will offer their skills and expertise to the participating ventures by serving as speakers, ongoing program advisors and one-on-one mentors.

 

Our first program will launch in April with events in Mexico City. You can learn more about the Latin America cohort and follow their progress here. We’re also beginning recruitment for the US program by hosting a FinTech Entrepreneur Showcase at SXSW on March 12. The event will give 10 leading candidates for the upcoming program an opportunity to demonstrate their solutions to an invitation-only group of investors, community leaders and potential partners, including PayPal, The Case Foundation, Kapor Center for Social Impact and Student Loan Genius, a Village Capital graduate and portfolio company.

 

We know creative solutions like the ones we’ll help to identify this year are critical to improving the financial health of underserved individuals and business around the world, and we’re thrilled to work with Village Capital to help build a more enabling ecosystem for these innovators and their teams.

 

We’re just getting started – stay tuned for lots more impact to come!