e-zwich payment system : an innovative method for improving accessibility to banking and retail services in Ghana.

e-zwich is the brand name for the National Switch and Smart card payment system. The e-zwich payment system is an innovative method for improving accessibility to banking and retail services in Ghana. The e-zwich system offers Deposit taking financial institutions (i.e. Universal banks, Rural banks and Savings and Loans) a platform that enables them to interoperate.

This therefore, enables e-zwich cardholders to perform banking and retail transactions at the outlets of other e-zwich financial institutions.

As an e-zwich cardholder, you have available to you a large group of banks and their branches where your e-zwich transactions can be performed. It is therefore no more necessary to commute to a specific bank just to do banking transactions. The e-zwich smart-card is currently the only card in Ghana that provides the convenience of nationwide access as well as greater control over transactions for cardholders, retail merchants and other corporate users.

Features include:
1 Transaction
2 Security
3 Interoperability

Aureos Capital: aims to raise $400m for smaller companies in Africa

Aureos Capital, one of the most experienced private equity groups in Africa, is aiming to raise $400m for a ground-breaking bet on the potential of smaller companies to build businesses spanning the continent, writes Barney Jopson in London.

The group, domiciled in Mauritius, is among a handful of emerging market specialists active in Africa and already runs three funds, dedicated to east, west and southern Africa, which total $140m.

The new pan-African fund is a significant strategic gamble because Aureos is betting on companies' ability to overcome regulatory and physical barriers that have long impeded trade among African countries. It plans to begin marketing the fund in the final quarter of this year and wants to secure commitments by the end of next year.

Finfo.com : Personal Finance Sims for Students

Finfo is a fresh approach to consumer finance. We provide easy-to-use tools that will guide you through common financial scenarios and a network of banks waiting to send you competing offers. With the information you need and the deals you want, Finfo is your one-stop shop for financial service.

LINK : http://www.finfo.com/

online destination for entrepreneurs to showcase their business ideas

RaiseCapital.com is an online community, where entrepreneurs can showcase their business ideas and capital needs (whether a start-up or existing business) to investors.

The problem that has always challenged entrepreneurial individuals is where to locate capital. More times then not, some of the best investment ideas never come to market due to the limited access to capital. In addition, established businesses seeking capital to expand can face similar problems.

RaiseCapital.com makes it possible for individuals and businesses to market their investment opportunities in a cost effective and efficient manner. Investors can find dynamic local, regional or nationwide investments opportunities with ease, using our database search tool.

"RaiseCapital.com- The name says it all."

The Free Trading Community.

At Zecco we’ve gone ahead and reconstructed the mold on traditional web brokerages, making it easier than ever for you to get smart and act smart with your money. Think of us as a full package upgrade to the typical online investment routine.


At the heart of their market-busting change lies their promise of zero dollar trade commissions. That’s right. The price war is over. You won. You can make up to 10 trades in any one day up to a total of 40 trades a month at no cost, and after that you only have to pay a paltry $3.50 per stock trade. Option trades only cost $3.50 plus $.60 a contract.


It all started with a complete re-think of the industry and a dedication to a minimalist business model that cuts out the fat like those big, expensive TV commercials and wall-to-wall online advertising. Instead, we focused on beefing up the important stuff like market data, tools, news, opinions and insight. Then we really went to work, harnessing the full power of the Internet to provide an array of user-matching capabilities which let people trade ideas and network with experts and like-minded investors for an unparalleled investment experience.

And the best part? It’s all free.

Best tools for building, maintaining, and analyzing y.our portfolios

SteamStreet is simply a better way to manage your financial portfolios. The most important information is brought to the forefront, providing you with a way to quickly understand how you're doing.Stocks are linked to real companies, so SteamStreet gives you a view that includes company logos. And you can instantly see daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly performance of any asset.


Adding, editing, and deleting transactions is quick and easy, but SteamStreet gives you new ways to look at them. For example, ever want to see only the transactions related to a specific stock? Or maybe you want to see how well the stocks that you've sold are doing.

Link : http://www.steamstreet.com

a new web 2.0 financial website that utilizes the computing power of its community of volunteers

GStock.com is a new web 2.0 financial website that utilizes the computing power of its community of volunteers to form a virtual supercomputer. The goal of this virtual supercomputer is to identify the most historically effective technical analysis strategies per stock Who said that web 2.0 is just information sharing and collaboration? Why not collaborate with your computer power to beat the stock market? Using architecture similar to NASA's seti@home, GStock.com can utilize unimaginable computing power using thousands of its volunteers processors.



This community of volunteered computer power forms a virtual supercomputer which sole purpose is to find the best performing strategy for any stock. It calculates over 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) investment strategies on a 10-year period timeline for EVERY stock with a trading history. At the moment GStock.com already covers nearly 6,000 US traded stocks, market-timing each stock with a BUY or a SELL signal according to the best found investment strategy.

P2P Currency Exchange Social Network.

MoneyTwins.com is the first service that allows individuals and small groups of people to exchange their foreign currency notes directly with each other without using the services of a bank. There is a unique price for each currency at which transactions happen, the same that is used by the largest financial institutions.

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The leading source of funding information for entrepreneurs.

TheFunded.com is working to be the leading source of funding information for entrepreneurs. Help us to help you by reviewing and commenting on funds.

TheFunded.com set out a guide to help entrepreneurs find the perfect funding source for their business. Imagine if you had a comprehensive database of funding sources with practical insights from entrepreneurs who have dealt with the funds.Search for any fund in the world by name, and the list on the left dynamically updates, showing the top rated funds first.



Membership benefits:

Edit and Add funds and partners by clicking the respective links, but please make sure to include accurate information.
Review any fund on a 1-5 scale across five performance criteria to create an overall average fund rating.
Comment on both fund and partner performance with both public and private recommendations, and access the private commentary of others.
Agree and Disagree instantly with the comments by just clicking on the feedback links.

A Tag cloud like display of stock ticker symbols.

Stock Cloud is a tag cloud like display of stock ticker symbols. The larger the ticker symbol the more frequent that company distributes press releases.

Stock Cloud began as data mining experiment with a very simple goal — "Could they extract Business Partnerships by tracking press releases?" To accomplish this they selected a press release distribution agency, MarketWire, and began tracking releases. Using in-house developed code they parsed press releases and extracted any relevant stock symbol information. It's this extracted data that is the basis of Stock Cloud.



They've mashed-up more then a few third party web services with our own data collection. These web services include:

Google Blog Search.
Simile Timeline API.
SplogSplot Spam Blog Lookup.
Technorati Blog Search.
TRYNT Stock Symbol Lookup.
Yahoo Search.

Connect and loan money to small businesses in the developing world.

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, they gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified borrowers. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva.org, our partners upload their borrower profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them.

Kiva is using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

a Community-oriented stocks information portal for the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Stockskenya.com is a Community-oriented stocks information portal developed by Netware Associates Limited targeted at retail investors on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Stockskenya.com aims to provide accurate information and financial tools that individual investors can use. General and specific information pertaining to the stock market is provided, as well as news and links to other useful sources of information, while not providing professional financial advice.

Netware Associates Limited is an Information Technology company dealing in Web Based Information and Knowledge systems, Information Technology infrastructure, and ICT Consulting.

Got a cool startup, and looking for a new way to get the word out?

Got a cool startup, and looking for a new way to get the word out? Well, if you have a giant pile of cash and plane tickets to LA, not to mention an oh-so-exclusive invite, you can pitch at DEMO 07.

US social investors to invest in community-based economic projects

Shared Interest creates the means for US social investors to invest in community-based economic projects that will not only create jobs, but also alternative models of control and ownership."

Shared Interest’s guarantee fund helps low-income South Africans–particularly blacks, women, and people in rural communities. Eighty percent of people who benefit from our programs are women.

Is Shared Interest successful?
Since 1994, when Shared Interest was founded, Shared Interest has helped more than 600,000 people in South Africa. Shared Interest built houses—more than 62,000 safe, affordable homes. Shared Interest created jobs—more than 12,000 jobs. Shared Interest launched small businesses—more than 6,000.

How can I help Shared Interest and people in South Africa?
You can learn more about the challenges and opportunities in South Africa. You can invest in Shared Interest’s guarantee fund. And you can donate to Shared Interest programs. Visit the “Join Our Partnership” page now!

Vested Ventures provides Web Strategy Consulting and enjoy helping build great web businesses.

Vested Ventures is owned by Steve Poland.THey provide Web Strategy Consulting and enjoy helping build great web businesses.

Success on the web requires vision (Web Consulting), visitors (Internet Marketing) and conversions (High-end Web Development). We help our clients find, capture, and convert prospects into customers.

Using our vast experience with web technologies to solve real business problems, we also provide high-end custom web application and database programming.

Internet Marketing & Strategy

Search engine marketing consulting (search engine optimization, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, PPC)

* Internet marketing plan (competition, pricing, differentiators, how to launch, where to advertise)
o Competitive analysis (who are your competitors online and how can we better compete)
* Managing Pay-Per-Click campaigns with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), MSN adCenter

BoostScores.com is the only free "do it yourself" credit repair application of its kind on the internet!

BoostScores.com is the only free "do it yourself" credit repair application of its kind on the internet! You can draft, print and track the entire credit repair process online. Boostscores is completely web-based, so there is no software to install on your computer and you can access it from anwhere with an internet connection.

NetworthIQ : a place where people can track, share and compare their financial status.

NetworthIQ is the first production of Fourio, a startup based in Portland, Oregon, with a lot more than personal finance up its proverbial sleeve ... just you wait and see.

Inspired by the personal finance bloggers who feel liberated enough to share their net worth with the world, and the wonderful sharing sites (Flickr, 43things, del.icio.us, upcoming.org), NetworthIQ was conceived as a place where people can track, share and compare their financial status. We like to think of it as a social personal finance tool.

stocktickr : a collaborative web site that promotes information sharing about stocks.

stocktickr is a collaborative web site that promotes information sharing about stocks. We like to call it "social trading". You add stocks to your stocktickr and assign tags to each stock. Unlike other portfolio trackers on the web, stocktickr captures the current price as you add a stock. When you go back to view the stocks your tracking, you see when you added it, what tags you used, any comments you added, and the price when you added it.


As you add stocks to your stocktickr, your performance is automatically tracked. You can view your performance by stock or by tag. You can also view reports across all of stocktickr. For example, you can view the most profitable stocktickr users or the most profitable tags across the entire site.

When you add a stock to stocktickr, you are presented with the most popular tags that other users have used on the stock and the most popular overall tags on stocktickr. Just click the tag name to add or remove it from your tag field. Concentrate on coming up with a small number of tags per stock.

Each page has its own RSS feed. Let's say you want to follow any stocks that get tagged with "greatearnings" or "lowpe". At the bottom of those pages you'll see an orange RSS icon that is linked to the RSS page for those results. You can add that RSS link to your favorite news reader (we use Bloglines) and track activity on that tag.

The stocktickr pro subscription offers this as well as a ton of other features that will help you be a better trader.

Atlantic Coast Regional Fund a $200 million regional fund focused on 28 countries on near the African Coast of the Atlantic Ocean

AFIG is currently raising the Atlantic Coast Regional Fund (“ACRF”, the “Fund”), a $100 to $200 million regional fund focused on 28 countries on or near the African Coast of the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco to Angola (the “Region”). The Fund will target strong growth companies operating in West and Central Africa, preferably with a regional scope. ACRF will consider investments in all sectors, with particular focus on industrial firms, financial institutions and companies investing in infrastructure and other related sectors.

Target companies will be mature and cash-flow generative companies operating in sectors with high entry barriers and/or enjoying market dominance. In addition, target companies will exhibit a proven track record in terms of managerial competence, satisfactory and measurable performance and a solid business plan. ACRF expects to generate a net Internal Rate of Return of 20% - 25% in US$ terms, resulting in returns in excess of two times invested capital.

Geographic Focus The Region targeted by ACRF is defined as follows:
* Western Africa encompassing the 15 Economic Community of West African States (“ECOWAS”) countries, plus Mauritania and Morocco
* Central Africa encompassing the 6 CEMAC countries, plus the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Angola.

Aureos Capital : an independent private equity fund manager focused on the emerging markets.

Aureos Capital Limited is an independent private equity fund manager focused exclusively on the emerging markets. Aureos specialises in providing expansion and buyout capital for low to mid-cap businesses with prospects for strong growth and profitability across Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

Established in July 2001, Aureos has to date raised and managed US$570m in 24 funds worldwide. Ten of these funds have been raised since 2001, with approximately US$395m of committed capital. In addition, Aureos manages 14 funds previously sponsored and administered by CDC Group plc.

Building on Aureos’ strong track record established over 16 years of fund management in some of the world’s most challenging markets, Aureos is in the process of complementing its current portfolio by raising US$500m of additional capital over the next two years.