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Salam: Both a Greeting & Innovative Agricultural Financing Option

For over 6 million smallholder farmers in Pakistan, financing options are extremely limited. The Wasil Foundation, winner of the 2013 Islamic Microfinance Challenge, offers an alternative to traditional financing that enables farmers to build assets and sustainable livelihoods.

Digitizing Agriculture Value Chains: Building Value for Farmers

While there are clear benefits for buyers in digitized agricultural value chains, but the value proposition is less certain for farmers.

5 Ways Digital Payments can Bring Women into the Economy

When women are locked out of the formal economy, development suffers and growth stagnates. Wiping out gender discrimination in financial access is not easy, but certainly incorporating more digital tools can help bridge the gap between men and women.

Digitizing Agriculture Value Chains: The Story So far

For the 7% of the world's smallholder farmers who work in tight value chains, digitizing the steps required to move an agricultural product from the farm to final customers could be an opportunity to deepen financial inclusion.

Finding “Win-Win” in Digitally-Delivered Consumer Credit

Digital credit products are expanding rapidly in several markets. While convent for consumers beneficial for providers, the rapid innovation needs to be tempered with responsible delivery and usage.

Four Ways to Boost the Impact of India’s Direct Benefit Transfers

The Indian government is digitizing payments to beneficiaries of government subsidies, seeking to build a digital payment connection with every Indian household. How can these payments be combined with other efforts to help pull people out of poverty?

Six Takeaways from Rwanda’s Financial Inclusion Insights Survey

Even though Rwanda has low rates of technical literacy and handset usage, digital financial services have reached the same levels of active usage as Ghana, which has a much more "mobile-ready" population.

In Ghana, DFS Helps Spur 41% Increase in Financial Inclusion

The digital financial services sector in Ghana is changing for the better, and mobile financial services are finally breaking through in the country.

New Data Finds Mobile Money "On the Cusp" in Rwanda and Ghana

New data provides the most comprehensive picture yet of digital financial services (DFS) access and usage in Ghana and Rwanda.

Crowdsourcing at Work: Mapping Financial Access in Uganda

Dynamic, rapidly changing agent networks translate to a need for sophisticate, real-time location data and analysis tools. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is initiating a pilot program in Uganda to crowdsource data on financial services available in Uganda.

Digital Finance and Illiteracy: Four Critical Risks

Illiteracy is still a global problem, and most financial services are not designed for illiterate customers. The Helix Institute is working with financial service providers to help develop products and services that can work better for those who cannot read.

M-Pawa 1 Year on: Mobile Banking Perceptions, Use in Tanzania

A year after the launch of M-Pawa, how are Tanzania's farmers using the savings and loan service? What improvements could lead to more uptake?

Insights on Inactivity of Mobile Money Accounts in Côte d’Ivoire

Côte d’Ivoire is one of the most vibrant digital financial services markets in West Africa. But why do so many customers remain inactive?

Cashless Nigeria: Facilitating the Transition to Digital Payments

The Better than Cash Alliance released two studies covering Nigeria's journey from cash to digital payments. Digital payments are passing a tipping point in Nigeria's corporate sector, with 61% of salaries from large companies paid electronically.

Minimize Risk to Drive Smallholder Adoption of DFS

For the world’s smallholder families, risk is an ever-present part of daily life. Minimizing the risk of trying digital financial services was one of the key takeaways from CGAP’s four smallholder-focused human-centered design projects.

Small Business Finance and Financial Inclusion in Latin America

Limited acceptance of digital payments and high fees associated with using such services are two obstacles to greater financial inclusion in Latin American countries. Can these issues be solved at the retailer level, rather than the individual level?

Why Women Self-Help Group Members Make for Good Bank Agents

Pilot projects that train women self-help group members as bank agents in rural areas in India are proving to be promising.

Just How Open is Safaricom’s Open API?

In September 2015, Safaricom announced that it had opened its M-Pesa platform to allow developers to create next-generation solutions on the platform. But just how open is the platform?

Banking on Change: Enabling Women’s Access to Financial Services

Women face barriers in proving their identity, traveling to a bank, opening an account, and building a credit score that all contribute to the gender gap in access to financial services.

Safaricom Launches Feature to Stop Erroneous Transfers: Hakikisha

Safaricom recently launched an additional functionality “Hakikisha” on the M-Pesa Menu in Kenya, which will enable subscribers to confirm a recipient’s name before completing an M-Pesa transaction. Hakikisha has been under pilot for the last month.