Bloomberg lends its name to South African-founded fintech Omniscient African startups will be seen in 2026In recognition of the company's work in helping banks and insurers assess those who are excluded from affordable financial services due to lack of traditional credit history.
Bloomberg asked omniscience about a simple but powerful question: What if your grocery cart could unlock access to credit?
It's a question that is increasingly relevant to banks, insurers and lenders in Africa and other markets, where millions of people earn, spend and manage money responsibly but remain invisible to traditional credit scoring models. Without a formal credit history, many people are refused credit or offered products they cannot purchase.
omniscient is helping to change this by enabling financial institutions to securely and compliantly access new sources of alternative consumer behavior data from retailers, telcos and other businesses to make better credit, risk and customer acquisition decisions.
Its platform does not require companies to share or transfer raw customer data. Instead, organizations collaborate in a secure, privacy-preserving environment where anonymized data can be analyzed using built-in analytics, AI, and predictive modeling tools. These tools turn everyday behavioral signals, such as grocery shopping patterns, into information that lenders can use when traditional credit bureau data falls short.
In South Africa, Omniscient's platform has already been used by major banks and a major grocery retailer to test whether shopping behavior can help predict credit risk. The results showed that banks were able to assess more than 8 million previously uninsured consumers, including 3.2 million people qualifying for credit who otherwise would have been declined due to lack of credit history.
The model built using shopping behavior improved its ability to predict loan repayments by 41%, with one participating bank predicting a 29% increase in credit revenue.
“Bloomberg’s validation captures the real-world potential of alternative data when used safely,” said John Jacobson, CEO and co-founder of Omniscient.
“The grocery cart can tell you something meaningful about a person's financial behavior. The challenge is to enable banks to harness that insight without compromising consumer privacy or asking retailers to share raw customer data.”
Omniscient was one of 25 companies selected for Bloomberg's 2026 African Startups to Watch list. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya jointly top the list, with four companies each, highlighting the continued strength of Africa's three most visible startup ecosystems.
The names of the South African companies were Omniscient, Amesect, Aura and Gem.
For Sarvajna, this recognition adds to a growing list of international endorsements. The company was previously selected as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, named Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech winner for Social Good, selected for the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200, and recognized by the Financial Times as one of Africa's fastest growing companies.
The company is backed by global consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion, investment firm Arise and Africa's largest supermarket chain Shoprite Holdings. In 2025, Omniscient announced a $12.5 million Series A funding round to support its international expansion, including the United States, where lenders are looking for privacy-safe ways to assess thin-file and credit-invisible consumers.
“Financial inclusion is not just an African challenge,” Jacobson said.
“In every market, there are people who are excluded because the data used to evaluate them is incomplete. Better data can change this, but only if it is used in a way that protects privacy, maintains trust and puts organizations in control of their customer data.”
Omniscient was founded in South Africa in 2019 by John Jacobson and Anton Grutzmacher and now operates internationally.
Jacobson said Bloomberg's recognition also reflects broader changes in African technology.
“Africa must build for inclusion from the beginning,” he said. “It is producing technology that is practical, flexible, and globally relevant. We believe that privacy-preserving data collaboration will become critical infrastructure for financial services and AI, as it allows organizations to use better data without exposing the people behind it.”
