Mark Pickens

Mark Pickens is a Director of Emerging Market Solutions at Visa Inc. He’s based in Kigali, where he is part of the team working on the launch of an interoperable mobile money ecosystem in Rwanda. Mark joined Visa in 2011 with a decade of experience designing financial products geared to reaching unbanked consumers. Prior to Visa, Mark helped design and launch CGAP’s Technology Program which was one of the earliest socially-motivated investors at the nexus of electronic delivery channels and financial services for unbanked consumers. He has consulted to banks, mobile network operators, microfinance institutions, and technology start-ups in two dozen markets. His work is quoted in Wired, The Economist and The Banker, and he has instructed on microfinance at Wharton School of Business and Johns Hopkins. Pickens studied at the Institute of Design at Stanford University and holds a Master’s from Columbia University. He has lived and worked extensively in Africa and Asia, and is currently based in Rwanda.

By Mark Pickens

Research

Poor People Using Mobile Financial Services

Insights into how poor people use M-PESA, its impact on their lives, and some unexpected consequences.
Research

Regulating Transformational Branchless Banking

In a fast increasing number, policy makers and regulators in other developing and transition countries are embracing “transformational branchless banking”—the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and nonbank retail channels to reduce costs of delivering financial services to clients beyond the reach of traditional banking.
Research

Using Technology to Build Inclusive Financial Systems

Innovative use of information and communications technologies to inexpensively process a large volume of small transactions and deliver a wide range of financial services may help to make microfinance institutions (MFIs) more efficient and commercial banks more interested in serving poor people.
Research

Mobile Phones for Microfinance

This Brief addresses new research on the use of mobile phone banking.
Research

Mobile-Phone Banking and Low-Income Customers

This paper presents the first public findings on how low-income people view and use m-banking, using results of a survey of 515 low-income individuals in South Africa. Three hundred of those surveyed do not use m-banking, while 215 are customers of WIZZIT, a startup mobile banking provider. WIZZIT targets the 16 million South Africans who lack or have difficulty accessing formal banking services.