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Meanwhile in Brazil...Are We There Yet?

The job of financial inclusion in Brazil is arguably done. Brazil’s banks have made it a global leader in branchless banking. The underlying retail payment infrastructure is in place. There are agent locations in almost every municipality. New agent management companies from around the world regularly visit more than 30 of their counterparts in Brazil to understand how the business works. And Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, already successful in moving beyond G2P payments to credit and savings, is considered a global flagship. We start here by presenting our learnings from Brazil and share our summary note on the industry.

Branchless Banking Country Notes

Over the past several months, we have taken a close look at the branchless banking industry in our focus countries.

Is There a Business Case for Offering Services to G2P Recipients?

The biggest challenge when it comes to the business case for banks is that the amount per grant payment is small, and as client research has shown, very little of each payment is left behind in the form of savings.

Will G2P Recipients Use Financial Services if Offered to Them?

Our recently released Focus Note on Social Cash Transfers and Financial Inclusion looks at the evidence from four large and well established programs in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa to attempt to answer three broad questions that are relevant to different stakeholder groups.

CGAP Releases Paper on G2P Payments and Financial Inclusion

Branchless banking is, fundamentally, a business built on high-volume, low-value transactions.

Head of Brazil’s Central Bank Financial Inclusion Team Speaks to CGAP

We recently spoke with Elvira Cruvinel, head of a new Brazilian Central Bank team coordinating financial inclusion efforts. Only a handful of countries globally have created such financial inclusion teams at central banks. Elvira is part of this small pioneering group of leaders looking to effect major changes to the financial access landscape. 1. What is the Brazilian Central Bank’s vision of financial inclusion?

Variations on a Theme: Business Models in Branchless Banking

We’ve done a lot of thinking at CGAP about the different business models and partnerships that exist in branchless banking. What I find interesting is that rarely do you find two models that look exactly alike. Once you begin to really dig beneath the surface, you realize that even among those businesses that we might simplistically call “telco-led” or “bank-led”, there are significant differences.

Banking Services Transforming A Town in the Amazon

What do the inhabitants of this small town of 15,000 people (30,000 including surrounding communities) in the Amazon need banking services for?

Platform-level Interconnection in Branchless Banking

Platform-level interconnection is what most people have in mind when they think of interoperability in branchless banking. When we speak of interoperable platforms, we are referring to platforms that permit the transfer of funds from one mobile account to the mobile account of another service provider.

Banks Have Some Good News…Are They Listening?

CGAP, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and Akya, a banking consultancy, recently completed some analysis on the business case for banks in branchless banking.

Will Brazil’s Banks Share Agents?

In a country where agents have existed for close to 10 years nationwide, we would expect that by now banks would have found business reasons to share agents. From a consumer perspective, it is clearly attractive to be able to access banking services for multiple providers at a single agent.

The Last Frontier for Branchless Banking: State of Play in WAEMU

Access to finance in WAEMU is very low, even by comparison to other regions of Africa. The rate of bancarization announced by the BCEAO in December 2010 was 9.5% and 12.7% of the population had an account with an MFI.

Branchless Banking in South Africa

South Africa has often been used as a case study by those with an interest in financial inclusion. The country has an advanced banking infrastructure with nearly 10,000 ATMs and over 100,000 POS devices deployed.

Can Brazil’s Agents Provide a Wider Range of Services?

The prevailing wisdom about Brazil’s vast agent network (largest in the world, 4x that of Kenya and the Philippines combined!) is that it is used mainly for bill payments. This network appears to be a missed opportunity to also make credit, savings, and other products available to low-income people in an affordable way. Is this channel being underutilized for poor people?

The State of the Branchless Banking Sector

As part of our efforts to promote branchless banking as a way of reducing the cost and expanding the reach of financial services, the Technology Program monitors the uptake of branchless banking around the world.

New Branchless Banking Resources – Headlines for April 2011

There are several new resources that have come out recently on branchless banking.

Focus on Product, Pricing and Agents to Drive Adoption

CGAP’s Branchless Banking Database synthesizes a mass of data into a short 12-image “story” about what branchless banking is and the key hurdles we face in 2011. We’ve converted that into a three-part series, which we conclude today.

Branchless Banking Has a Volume Problem

CGAP’s Branchless Banking Database synthesizes a mass of data into a short 12-image “story” about what branchless banking is and the key hurdles we face in 2011. We’ve converted that into a three-part series, which we continue today.

Can Branchless Banking Be Profitable?

The Agent Network Management toolkit comes with a financial model to help providers project the revenues generated in a branchless banking implementation for each member of the supply chain.

No Single Recipe When Structuring Agent Networks

When providers are planning the launch of a branchless banking service, one of the critical decisions facing them is how to structure the agent network.