Ethiopia’s second-biggest private commercial bank has launched a Sharia-compliant digital financial service through a modified version of Dube Ale, a buy now, pay later scheme kicked off last year. Dashen’s acting president, Tibebu Solomon, announced the new products developed in cooperation with Eaglelion System Technology at its headquarters in Addis Ababa’s financial district late Friday afternoon.
While full-fledged interest-free banking got the regulatory green light in late 2019 after being limited to a window service for seven years by the central bank, its digital financial innovation has been quite limited.
Dashen’s new product, dubbed Dube Ale-IFB, allows for several interest-free services and short-term financing in collaboration with merchants and traders, enabling customers to make purchases and pay later over a period of three, six, or twelve months without interest and profit markup as applicable. The maximum spending limit for DubeAle-IFB is set at birr 700,000, with payments made exclusively through the application.
Bersufikad Getache, CEO of Eaglelion, revealed that the Dube Ale conventional service has reached above 430K users, while the interest-free service has already gained over 44K registrations and signed up 17,000 merchants.
“Only sharia-compliant products are allowed in the new service,” he noted.
No Comment Found.