Laos fintech gives village banks, financial inclusion a timely boost

Three years ago, LTS Ventures was tasked with building a simple microfinance platform for Laos’s army of village banks and savings unions. It took off like a rocket, boosting financial inclusion, cutting fraud. Now the firm is eyeing fresh external funding and expansion across southeast Asia.

When Tim Scheffmann co-founded Laos-based LTS Ventures three years ago, he had a goal that continues to elude many well-meaning policymakers across large swathes of southeast Asia: to drag financially excluded citizens into the formal banking system.

“My main motivation was and is to financially include people,” the chief executive of the Vientiane-based fintech tells Euromoney. “I have been in the region for 10 years. I created a mobile-money startup in Myanmar and a blockchain-based remittance company based in Bangkok.

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