Toolkit

Handbook on Merchant Payments and Digital Financial Services

October 30, 2020

Digital finance and payments are surging in emerging markets, in large part because the technology extends financial inclusion to traditionally excluded groups, such as low-income individuals, farmers, women entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and microenterprises. Digitizing retail payments offers these communities new opportunities for expansion.

This handbook is designed for digital financial service providers wishing to build and manage merchant acceptance networks. Such providers typically include financial institutions, mobile network operators, fintechs, payment service firms, and the like. For these providers, expanding into merchant payments enables them to offer a wider ecosystem of products and services for existing and new customers.

The handbook helps providers to implement best practices that IFC has tested and observed through our global digital-finance projects and engagements.