Publications: Digital Finance
Results - 50 of at least 78 items found
Feb 18, 2019
Digitizing Merchant Payments in Bangladesh
Bangladesh’s largest mobile financial services provider,bKash, added mobile merchant payments to its service offerings in 2014. Three years later, more than 50,000 establishments throughout the country were registered with bKash’s platform. While the Bangladeshi economy is still predominantly cashbased, bKash is helping to revamp the way that transactions are made.
English | 28pages | 2019 IFC
Dec 21, 2018
Field Note #11 Granting Access: Leveraging Social Payments to Expand Digital Financial Inclusion in Cote d’Ivoire
Granting Access: Leveraging Social Payments to Expand Digital Financial Inclusion in Cote d’Ivoire captures the experience of piloting digital social grant payments in Cote d’Ivoire and concludes that merely paying social benefits into a digital account is not sufficient to lead to lasting financial inclusion, but that coupled with additional activities such as financial literacy campaigns and expanded agent networks it can have a positive impact on expanding adoption of digital financial services the poorest.
English | 13pages | 2018 IFC
Dec 19, 2018
Field Note #10 Women and Digital Financial Services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Understanding the Challenges and Harnessing the Opportunities
Women and Digital Financial Services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Understanding the Challenges and Harnessing the Opportunities also draws on several studies over the past six years and shows that there are pronounced differences in the way men and women engage financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers recommend that providers offer simplified services for basic phones, emphasize marketing through social networks, and mimic the flexibility and social aspects of informal services to better reach women.
English | 14pages | 2018 IFC
Dec 17, 2018
Field Note #9 Banking on the Future: Youth and Digital Financial Services in Sub-Saharan Africa
Youth and Digital Financial Services in Sub-Saharan Africa summarizes insights on youth uptake and usage of DFS from a cross-section of studies over the last six years, and recommends, for example, that providers can better reach out to the youth by offering savings accounts, checking or prepaid accounts, and micro loans.
English | 15pages | 2018 IFC
Nov 19, 2018
Field Note #8 Changing Management: adapting internal and external culture in times of digital transformation
The changes involved when a financial institution ‘goes digital’ touches all levels of the business and may even challenge the established business model or institutional identity. The successful implementation of a digital channel thus requires a sound change management plan. In fact, many digital projects that failed or struggled have done so because they did not address the change factors related to digitizing different areas of the organization. This Field Note focuses on the ‘soft’ or interpersonal aspects of digital transformation in the financial sector.
English | 20pages | 2018 IFC
Nov 5, 2018
Blended Concessional Finance: Scaling Up Private Investment in Lower-Income Countries
Blending funds from private investors with concessional funds from donors and philanthropic sources has a strong potential to scale up investment in lower-income countries and thereby accelerate development. The use of blended concessional finance is already prevalent in lower-income countries representing over 70 percent of IFC’s commitments. Recent strategies from development finance institutions including the World Bank Group indicate that the relative share of lower-income countries in the global mix of blended concessional finance will increase further. Scaling up engagements in lower-income countries requires solutions tailored to local contexts, as well as the deployment of the whole spectrum of development finance tools, including advisory work, regulatory dialogue and reform, and a mix of blending instruments encompassing both pricing and risk mitigation features.
English | 6 pages - November - Note 60 | IFC 2018
Nov 5, 2018
Blended Concessional Finance: Scaling Up Private Investment in Lower-Income Countries (EM Compass Note 60)
Blending funds from private investors with concessional funds from donors and philanthropic sources has a strong potential to scale up investment in lower-income countries and thereby accelerate development. The use of blended concessional finance is already prevalent in lower-income countries representing over 70 percent of IFC’s commitments. Recent strategies from development finance institutions including the World Bank Group indicate that the relative share of lower-income countries in the global mix of blended concessional finance will increase further. Scaling up engagements in lower-income countries requires solutions tailored to local contexts, as well as the deployment of the whole spectrum of development finance tools, including advisory work, regulatory dialogue and reform, and a mix of blending instruments encompassing both pricing and risk mitigation features.
English | 6 pages | 2018 IFC
Oct 30, 2018
How a Know-Your-Customer Utility Could Increase Access to Financial Services in Emerging Markets
Global efforts to counter terrorism financing and money laundering have led banks to terminate relationships with some communities, businesses, and individuals around the world. When a financial institution or intermediary cannot easily judge the identity and associated risks of a customer, it is often more efficient to avoid transacting with that customer altogether. This may disproportionately affect small banks, small firms, and low-income individuals in emerging and developing economies. This Compass Note explores an innovative solution that could help improve customer due diligence through a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) utility.
English | 8 pages – October – Note 59 | IFC 2018
Oct 30, 2018
How a Know-Your-Customer Utility Could Increase Access to Financial Services in Emerging Markets (EM Compass Note 59)
Global efforts to counter terrorism financing and money laundering have led banks to terminate relationships with some communities, businesses, and individuals around the world. When a financial institution or intermediary cannot easily judge the identity and associated risks of a customer, it is often more efficient to avoid transacting with that customer altogether. This may disproportionately affect small banks, small firms, and low-income individuals in emerging and developing economies. This Compass Note explores an innovative solution that could help improve customer due diligence through a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) utility.
English | 4 pages | 2018 IFC
Oct 26, 2018
Competition Works: Driving Microfinance Institutions to Reach Lower-Income People and the Unbanked in Peru
Competition from commercial banks is prompting microfinance institutions in urban areas of Peru and other Latin American nations to provide more service to lower-income groups. Where higher-income clients are already served by commercial banks, microfinance institutions compete by attending to a new demographic, while continuing to serve higher-income clients where commercial banking services are scarce.
English | 4 pages – October – Note 58 | IFC 2018
Oct 26, 2018
Competition Works: Driving Microfinance Institutions to Reach Lower-Income People and the Unbanked in Peru (EM Compass Note 58)
Competition from commercial banks is prompting microfinance institutions in urban areas of Peru and other Latin American nations to provide more service to lower-income groups. Where higher-income clients are already served by commercial banks, microfinance institutions compete by attending to a new demographic, while continuing to serve higher-income clients where commercial banking services are scarce.
English | 4 pages | 2018 IFC
Sep 27, 2018
HANDBOOK: Digital Financial Services for Agriculture
This handbook offers financial services providers an understanding of smallholder farmers and agricultural value chains, and practical guidance on how to develop and launch sustainable financial services for the agricultural sector. It surveys the current landscape in terms of existing DFS offerings in the agricultural sector, to share actual market experience and lessons learned from the pioneers in the market. Although financial inclusion has expanded dramatically in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past ten years due to the rapid evolution of mobile money and agent banking, access to formal financial services remains limited in rural areas and in the agricultural sector. Agriculture contributes to about 18 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa, but only an estimated 1 percent of bank lending in the region is allocated to the agricultural sector.
English | 236 pages | 2018 IFC
Aug 3, 2018
Aligning Expectations: The Business Case for Digital Financial Services
IFC and Mastercard have launched a research report providing insight into the case for Digital Financial Services (DFS) and financial projections from nine microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. The four-year study includes a set of best practice financial modeling benchmarks that can be used as a valuable guide for financial institutions implementing DFS.
English | 17pages | 2018 IFC
May 16, 2018
Modelo Peru: A Mobile Money Platform Offering Interoperability Towards Financial Inclusion (EM Compass Note 54)
Like most emerging markets, Peru suffers from low banking penetration and faces challenges to providing financial services. Beginning in 2015, a strategy called Modelo Peru emerged as a collaboration between financial institutions, telecom companies, and the government, with the goal of launching a mobile money platform to better serve the nation’s unbanked and underbanked. The platform’s main innovative feature is interoperability among these three groups to achieve scale and breed competition among e-money issuers.
English | 9 pages | 2018 IFC
May 15, 2018
DIGITAL ACCESS: The Future of Financial Inclusion in Africa
The launch and growth of digital financial services in Africa has led to an unprecedented increase in the number of people enjoying access to formal financial services. The continent is now home to more digital financial services deployments than any other region in the world, with almost half of the nearly 700 million individual users worldwide. Mobile money solutions and agent banking now offer affordable, instant, and reliable transactions, savings, credit, and even insurance opportunities in rural villages and urban neighborhoods where no bank had ever established a branch.
English | 97 pages | 2018 IFC|
May 1, 2018
Digital Access: The Future of Financial Inclusion in Africa
Financial inclusion is one of Africa’s great success stories of the past decade. Just over 43 percent of adults on the continent now have access to formal financial services, compared to 23 percent in 2011. This is primarily due to the introduction of digital financial services and their contribution to the creation of a market for affordable, accessible and sustainable financial services for those who were previously excluded from access to traditional banking services. Over the past six years, IFC and the Mastercard Foundation have worked with 14 financial services providers across the continent to leverage new technology to build and test innovative business models for financial inclusion. We have gained valuable knowledge and experience in the process. This report captures the ongoing transformation of the financial sector in Africa, shares our most important lessons learned, and casts an eye at the future of financial inclusion in the region.
English
Apr 20, 2018
Crowding-In Capital Attracts Institutional Investors to Emerging Market Infrastructure Through Co-Lending Platform (EM Compass Note 53)
Financing infrastructure in emerging markets is a critical global challenge for sustainable development. Through a new IFC program, private institutional investors can directly participate in the evolving infrastructure asset class in emerging markets. The program, IFC’s Managed Co-Lending Portfolio Program (MCPP) for Infrastructure, creates a structure that overcomes several hurdles that have inhibited the flow of private capital to emerging market infrastructure projects. Read more.
English | 4 pages | 2018 IFC
Apr 19, 2018
Crowding-In Capital: How Insurance Companies Can Expand Access to Finance (EM Compass Note 52)
Development institutions, governments, and the investment community have been exploring ways to increase private capital flows to support critical development projects in emerging markets. A new financing mechanism applies the risk-bearing capacity and know-how of insurance companies to allow these companies to take what are, in many cases, their first insurance exposure to markets and counterparties. This innovative credit insurance solution, which we call “Credit Mobilization,” is being pioneered to provide long-term funding to developing country banks, and may offer significant potential for scale-up and replication.
English | 5 pages | 2018 IFC
Feb 5, 2018
Understanding Key Mobile Money Users
Mobile money platforms are networked systems, and understanding key mobile money users is essential for mobile money providers, policy makers, and promoters of financial inclusion who seek to impact their future development. Are there especially active mobile money users with an outsize effect on the system? If so, who are these key mobile money users, what drives them to use the service extensively, and what is the nature of their influence? This report identifies this key user group and explores how the small group of very active users exerts substantial influence over system as a whole.
English | 34 pages | 2018 IFC
Jan 26, 2018
Increased Regulation and De-risking are Impeding Cross-Border Financing in Emerging Markets (EM Compass Note 48)
Correspondent banking relationships connect banks and people across borders and are critical to finance and trade. They are a vital link between emerging markets and the broader global economy. Yet efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism have increased compliance requirements for banks. Difficulties adhering to these requirements and increased costs associated with them threaten the ability of banks to serve their customers, while also eroding the number and quality of correspondent banking relationships. A recent IFC survey shows that many banks are feeling the pressure of increased regulation and de-risking, and emerging market banks are bearing the brunt of it.
English | 7 pages | 2018 IFC
Jan 1, 2018
Opportunities for Digital Financial Services in the Cocoa Value Chain in Cote d’Ivoire: insights from new data
This study explores what role digital financial services may play in extending financial services to rural populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically looking at small-holder farmers in the large cocoa sector in Cote d’Ivoire. It offers unique insights into the financial behaviors of small-scale farmers and highlights possible opportunities for digital financial services providers to extend financial inclusion.
English | 30pages | 2018 IFC
Dec 19, 2017
A Sense of Inclusion: An Ethnographic Study of the Perceptions and Attitudes to Digital Financial Services in Sub-Saharan Africa
This report is based on ethnographic research conducted by a team at the African Studies Center Leiden, University of Leiden, and focused on four countries of varying degrees of DFS market maturity: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Zambia. It provides an in-depth description of what digital financial inclusion means in relation to social and cultural factors, and provides an ethnographic framework to market research that can aid financial services providers gain a better understanding of the African DFS user and capture a sense of the deeper fabric of the emerging market.
English | 36pages |2017 IFC
Dec 15, 2017
Field Note #7 Turning MFI Digital Strategies Into Reality
For most microfinance institutions, digital financial services is a completely new type of business. While potentially offering benefits and opportunities to provider and customers alike, DFS are far from the MFIs core areas of expertise and comfort zone. Few MFIs have clear enough visibility of the options and implications of digital strategies to readily determine which is best suited to their particular circumstances. The encouraging news, shared in this Field Note, is that new research indicates that a number of MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa are starting to get to grips with the challenges of deploying DFS, and are on the path to success.
English | 14pages | 2017 IFC
Nov 22, 2017
Developing mobile banking technologies in Indonesia (Bank Sinar Case Study)
Building an effective mobile wallet product requires constant innovation.
English | 2 pages | 2017 IFC
Nov 15, 2017
Developing alternative delivery channels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (FINCA DRC Case Study)
FINCA DRC has been bringing financial services to the unbanked in a difficult environment.
English | 2 pages | 2017 IFC
