Fintech Veteran Launches Social-Impact Venture to Tackle Global Financial-Inclusion Gap
Washington, D.C. – November 28, 2025 Accion Impact Management today unveiled Accion Ventures, a re-branded, expansion-stage impact fund that will deploy $61.6 million in early-stage capital to fintech startups closing the global financial-inclusion gap. The announcement accelerates a decade-long investment track record that has already backed 76 companies across 30+ countries and delivered 13 full or partial exits since 2012.
“With the huge uptick in mobile technologies in emerging economies, we see a significant opportunity to connect many small businesses and low-income consumers to the digital economy for the first time,” said Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. “Leveraging third-party capital to deliver social and financial objectives is a critical part of our strategy.”
According to the Global Findex 2025 report, 1.6 billion adults remain unbanked or under-banked, while micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) face an annual financing shortfall of $5.7 trillion—a market failure that Accion Ventures intends to turn into a market opportunity. The fund will concentrate on seed and Series A companies leveraging embedded finance, alternative data, and AI-driven underwriting to reach women, rural populations, and informal workers historically excluded from legacy credit models.
“We aim to be one of the first institutional checks a company receives and will maintain sufficient reserves to back our winners as they scale,” added Amee Parbhoo, Managing Partner of Accion Ventures. “Our local presence in Lagos, Jakarta, Nairobi, and Mumbai allows us to spot trends faster and share learnings across geographies.”
The fund’s first four investments illustrate that cross-border thesis:
- PaidHR (Nigeria) – earned-wage access and payroll automation for SMEs;
- Foyer (United States) – credit-building platform for immigrant professionals;
- FinFra (Indonesia) – embedded working-capital loans for e-commerce sellers;
- Flowcart (Kenya) – inventory financing for micro-retailers tracked via mobile POS data.
Beyond capital, portfolio companies receive hands-on support in regulatory navigation, board governance, and follow-on fundraising—resources that helped prior exits Apollo Agriculture, Lula, and Pula achieve regional scale and attract downstream investors such as Mastercard and SoftBank.
Market tailwinds favor the strategy. The Principal Global Financial Inclusion Index 2025 shows employer-led inclusion efforts stalling for the first time (-0.6 points), while government and fintech-enabled financial-system scores rose +0.6 points year-over-year, underscoring the growing importance of venture-backed innovators to fill widening service gaps.
“Connection and funding move at the speed of trust,” said Rahil Rangwala, Accion Ventures Managing Partner. “Startups that combine empathetic customer design with mobile-first infrastructure can deliver both sustainable returns and measurable impact—our dual mandate since day one.”
Accion Ventures is registered as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and operates as the flagship vehicle within Accion Impact Management, the for-profit investment arm of global nonprofit Accion.
About Accion
Accion is a global nonprofit dedicated to creating a fair and inclusive economy for the nearly two billion people failed by the mainstream financial system. Over four decades the organization has helped build 285 financial-service providers serving low-income clients in 77 countries, reaching 478 million customers. Visit www.accion.org.
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