Airfox Named a World Changing Ideas Award Honoree by Fast Company
Award recognizes best of social entrepreneurship, based on feasibility and the potential for impact
Fast Company today announced the winners of its World Changing Ideas Awards, a prestigious awards program highlighting the most innovative ideas that make the world better. We are excited to share that Airfox was honored in the Developing World Technology category for providing transformative financial solutions to the underserved at a fraction of the cost of traditional banks.
Currently available in Brazil with plans to replicate its business model throughout Latin America, Airfox provides access to much-needed financing solutions via mobile phones. Out of nearly 210 million individuals, two-thirds of Brazil’s population are underbanked and operate in a cash-based economy — making it nearly impossible to rise to the middle class. Since the Airfox launch in 2018, over 20,000 people have already engaged with the app.
Airfox was founded by Google veterans and is working towards expanding the footprint of its transformative financial solutions, including a national retail partnership in Brazil. Airfox also aims to build credit scores for users, even if they lack traditional credit history, by analyzing thousands of data points using its proprietary machine learning algorithms that analyze financial and behavioral trends. Once Airfox creates a base of digital credit identity and history, it plans to launch a decentralized peer-to-peer lending platform to provide more affordable access to capital for millions of people.
Now in its third year, the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award showcases 17 winners, more than 200 finalists, and more than 300 honorable mentions. A panel of eminent judges selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 2,000 entries. Other honorees include Planned Parenthood and Work & Co’s sexual health chatbot for teens, and Aira for its special set of glasses for people who are blind or have low vision. The 2019 awards featured entries from across the globe, from New Zealand to Shanghai to Switzerland.
“Airfox is using technology to change the world for the better, and reasonably profit while doing so — to not only provide value to its shareholders, but to unlock the value of technology for the 99% who deserve a chance to access the digital economy and financial mobility,” said Victor Santos, CEO and co-founder, Airfox. “In addition to helping users create personal wealth, Airfox hopes to eliminate factors that decrease wealth by combating financial illiteracy through education, positive incentives, social capital, and personal finance management.”
About the World Changing Ideas Awards
World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With a goal of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.
About Airfox
Airfox is on a mission to provide the roughly four billion unbanked and financially underserved individuals in emerging markets mobile access to financial services. Airfox aims to create an entirely new financial services model that serves the underbanked with reliable, egalitarian, and democratic access to capital and financial services. Airfox is a venture-backed, financial technology company based in Boston and São Paulo. To learn more about the future of decentralized digital banking, visit https://airfox.com.
