For years, Uganda’s digital lending sector has expanded at breathtaking speed, but without the underlying visibility required to support responsible growth. Borrowers have increasingly turned to mobile money as their main source of short-term credit, often juggling obligations across MTN MoMo and Airtel Money. Lenders, meanwhile, have operated in the dark, able to see only borrower behaviour within their ecosystem or telco of choice.
This gap has led to widespread credit invisibility, unintentional over-borrowing, and an unpredictable risk environment. Yet, despite the size and sophistication of Uganda’s digital finance sector, no solution had ever managed to unify borrower visibility across both mobile-money networks.
That is, until now.
A Transformational Leap: The Universal Loan Checker
In the coming weeks, gnuGrid CRB is set to introduce what its founder and team lead, David Opio Obwangamoi, describes as “the most consequential digital credit infrastructure upgrade Uganda has seen in a decade.”
The gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker, an industry first, consolidates borrower loan activity across Momo from MTN and Airtel Money into one interoperable, real-time view.
David explains the significance with characteristic clarity. For him, this innovation is not merely another product; it is a decisive answer to a structural flaw that has long undermined the integrity of Uganda’s digital lending market. It provides lenders with a reliable, comprehensive view of borrower exposure, while giving borrowers a clear understanding of their digital credit lives.
Opio, who was speaking on the sidelines of a co-creation workshop organised by gnuGrid CRB for stakeholders in the digital lending landscape, sees this tool as the moment “the ecosystem finally gets the universal visibility it has been asking for.”
The workshop brought together regulators, telcos, digital lenders, SACCO networks, fintechs, and development partners.
Regulators: A Turning Point for Consumer Protection and Market Stability
The regulatory community has welcomed the Universal Loan Checker as a critical intervention.
According to Racheal Vanesa N. Muhwezi, Manager for Microfinance Institutions at the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA): “It will provide visibility into a borrower’s loan history across networks (major industry players-MNOs where licensed Digital lenders are partners with major MNOs), which will support in preventing over-indebtedness and predatory practices”
She notes that cross-network borrowing has long posed systemic risks: “the lack of a complete credit picture prevents lenders from accurately assessing a borrower’s total debt burden and repayment capacity. This problem has led to significant over-indebtedness crises in various microfinance markets globally and poses a major risk to both individual consumers and the stability of the financial system.”
UMRA believes that tools like the gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker are essential to achieving Uganda’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy, which aims for 85% inclusion by 2028.
“Responsible data sharing improves lender risk assessment, ensures consumer protection, and fosters market stability,” she emphasises.
Momo from MTN: Closing a Long-Standing Visibility Gap
For MTN Mobile Money Uganda (MTN MoMo), the country’s largest mobile money operator, the gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker marks a fundamental shift.
Richard Yego, the Managing Director/CEO, says MTN firmly supports the solution and that this support is anchored in the need for a safer, more transparent ecosystem.
“The Universal Loan Checker closes the long-standing visibility gap by giving lenders a single, cross-network view of a customer’s existing digital credit obligations.”
He adds that the consequences of fragmented credit data have been severe: “The visibility gap has contributed to portfolio stress for lenders and financial vulnerability for borrowers. Without a unified view, lenders have relied on partial information, often extending credit without knowing whether a customer is already stretched across multiple platforms. With the Universal Loan Checker, we expect to see a fundamental shift in market behaviour.”
Richard underscores that interoperability aligns directly with MTN’s digital financial inclusion agenda: “Interoperability is at the heart of our MoMo strategy. This initiative strengthens trust, expands safe access to credit, and reinforces MTN’s role in Uganda’s digital transformation.”
Airtel Money: Protecting the Ecosystem and Lowering the Cost of Credit
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From Airtel Mobile Commerce Uganda Limited (AMCUL), the message is equally clear. The CEO, Japhet Aritho, says Airtel Money backed the gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker because the digital credit market must be protected from the cost of irresponsible borrowing.
“We support the Universal Loan Checker to protect the ecosystem and lower the cost of credit. Bad borrowers make it unnecessarily expensive for everyone.”
He expects the gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker to significantly change borrower and lender behaviour: “The service will greatly improve credit scoring. Customers will only take credit they can manage, preventing unsustainable debt, while lenders can extend more credit with confidence.”
Airtel sees this transparency as a catalyst for more innovation: “This will spark more partnerships and services; affordable credit, insurance, savings, driving economic growth without differentiation.”
UNCDF: A Breakthrough for Responsible Lending and Inclusive Digital Finance
The development community views the gnuGrid CRB Universal Loan Checker as a structural milestone in Uganda’s journey toward responsible digital finance. According to Shakila Kerre, MSME & Fintech Financing Specialist at the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the tool directly confronts the information gaps that have long weakened lending decisions.
“The Universal Loan Checker will allow for cross-industry sharing of data, solving for information asymmetry with respect to customer indebtedness levels,” she says, adding: “Responsible lending requires that financial service providers avoid extending credit that would compromise a customer’s ability to meet essential financial obligations. The Universal Loan Checker will strengthen this principle by giving FSPs a snapshot of borrowers’ active loans across networks.”
As part of its broader mission, UNCDF works to unlock capital for underserved markets by deploying innovative, risk-absorbing financial instruments that attract private investment into high-risk environments. In Uganda, its FinWise strategy focuses on building inclusive digital finance solutions for micro and small businesses, enabling them to participate more fully in the digital economy. Through initiatives such as the 10X Programme, UNCDF is helping thousands of financially disadvantaged young people, particularly young women, gain access to the tools, finance, and digital capabilities they need to grow and thrive.
Shakila notes that the Universal Loan Checker has benefits across both sides of the market:
“The benefits of cross-network credit visibility are two-pronged, benefitting both the demand and supply sides. On the demand side, it will contribute to a more nuanced credit decisioning process, opening the possibility of risk-based pricing, where customers with good credit ratings can benefit from reduced pricing. It will also reduce overindebtedness as borrowers will only be offered credit levels aligned with their cash flows. For the supply side, it will help financial services providers to strengthen their credit portfolio (lower default rates) as lenders will avoid high-risk borrowers who are already leveraged elsewhere.”
She adds that the innovation has the potential to shift pricing and improve market discipline: “An innovation that increases transparency in the lending market and improves repayment performance can, therefore, help reduce default rates and, ultimately, drive interest rates downward.”
Toward a Future of Responsible Borrowing and Rewarded Behaviour
The Universal Loan Checker marks a decisive shift toward a more transparent and accountable credit landscape. It gives borrowers, many for the first time, a complete view of their loan obligations across networks, enabling them to better understand and manage their financial lives. Lenders, in turn, gain a clearer picture of borrower exposure, reducing risk and allowing for more accurate, data-driven underwriting decisions. Regulators also benefit from improved visibility, strengthening their oversight of market practices and consumer protection. With this level of transparency, good borrowers are finally rewarded with fairer pricing and faster access to credit, while the entire ecosystem moves toward greater predictability, trust, and long-term sustainability.
As Momo from MTN’s Richard Yego puts it: “This innovation sets a new standard, enabling more stable portfolios, stronger regulatory oversight, and deeper ecosystem collaboration.”
And Airtel Money’s Japhet Aritho adds: “The credit market is a shared public resource that should be protected collectively. With this solution, trust will grow, and new partnerships will flourish.”
The Backbone of Uganda’s Next Digital Credit Era
With the Universal Loan Checker, Uganda finally gains the shared truth its digital lending ecosystem has long needed. It is not merely a product; it is the foundational infrastructure for a safer, more inclusive, and more transparent digital credit future.
And as Opio emphasises: “You cannot build a responsible credit system without a shared truth. And for the first time, Uganda’s digital lenders will have exactly that.”
The Universal Loan Checker is yet another industry first by gnuGrid CRB, Uganda’s only indigenous Credit Reference Bureau, and the latest in a series of groundbreaking digital credit infrastructure solutions the company has delivered over the years. Before this cross-network innovation, gnuGrid CRB pioneered the Mobile Credit Score, Uganda’s first alternative-data credit score built on mobile money behaviour and real-time transactional patterns, unlocking visibility for millions of borrowers previously excluded from traditional scoring. It went on to introduce the SACCO Credit Score, the country’s first-ever scoring model tailored to cooperatives, capturing repayment behaviour in rural and community lending markets that had long operated in the shadows. Building on this, gnuGrid CRB launched the SACCO Industry Dashboard, a national digital performance-monitoring platform that, for the first time, allowed SACCOs to benchmark themselves against peers while giving regulators unprecedented transparency into the sector. The company has also powered the scoring engines behind several high-volume digital microloan products, demonstrating its capability to design robust, real-time decisioning systems at scale.
Together, these innovations have progressively illuminated Uganda’s fragmented credit landscape, laying the foundation upon which the Universal Loan Checker now stands as the most unifying and consequential upgrade to date.
