In this episode of the Frontier Markets Podcast, we have a conversation with Zack Marks, the founder of Jia Finance.

Zack has been involved in unlocking capital for small and medium sized businesses in emerging markets for the last decade; and Jia Finance is the latest culmination of those efforts.

In this episode, we cover:

• The origin story of Jia Finance; a crypto lending protocol that makes it easier for global pools of capital to engage in data driven lending for SMEs in Kenya, Philippines, and India
• The market landscape for crypto meeting emerging markets
• Industry overviews of the financial systems in Kenya and Philippines.
• Stories of founders in emerging markets, and discussion on cultures of entrepreneurship.

This was an incredibly fun conversation. In particular, I liked the part where we got to touch upon the design space of community finance within different cultures.

---

Related Resources:

• Jia Finance on Twitter
• Zack on Linkedin
• Cool Newsletter on Crypto across Africa.