Fetch.ai, Algbra partner to bring AI-driven DeFi services to minority communities

Fetch.ai, an artificial intelligence lab based in the British city of Cambridge, today announced its partnership with Algbra, a London-based fintech platform, to bring artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to decentralized finance (DeFi) and the banking sector to provide minority communities with greater access to financial services.

Fast facts

• According to a statement shared with Forkast.News, the partnership will see Algbra leveraging Fetch.ai’s AI and machine learning technology for its digital finance products to provide retail consumers and small and midsized enterprises with a better understanding of their transactions and financial needs. The products will first be available in the U.K. and Europe and expand to Asia, Fetch.ai said.

• Humayun Sheikh, Fetch.ai CEO, told Forkast.News in an email that integrating AI and blockchain expands economic opportunities by enabling banks to reach out to low-income, vulnerable consumers without relying on intrinsic societal biases and provides greater access to financial services by substantially lowering the entry barriers. “The democratization of mobile phones and the internet has indeed provided many people access to financial services such as digital credit,” Sheikh said. “What the integration of AI and blockchain can bring forward is provide transparency, data aggregation, automate decision-making and allow banks to advance products to those who lack banking services without suffering from bureaucratic processes whilst underlining the usage of advanced AI and money laundering techniques to detect fraud detection and market monitoring.”

• Zeiad Idris, Algbra CEO, said in a statement: “With over a quarter of the world’s population being financially overlooked (with 1.7 billion people on the planet remaining unbanked), decentralized finance has recently become a viable solution for communities both in the U.K. and across the globe. Every person on this planet deserves to participate in the modern financial system, which is why we are partnering with Fetch.ai to provide state-of-the-art innovative solutions with governance at their core that will address the inequities that are currently in place.”

• Algbra is also working with other partners including Mastercard, Allen & Overy and New World Group to create a network of institutions to bring transparency and financial products such as accounts, foreign exchange, remittances, rewards and lending products to low-income and minority communities.