Blog

Youth Building Peace: What’s the Role of Financial Inclusion?

What does financial inclusion have to do with building peaceful societies? More than you might think.

Women’s Financial Empowerment Is the Tide that Can Lift All Boats

Changing gender norms doesn't mean empowering women at the expense of men. When women have a voice in financial decisions, it can benefit the entire household.

What Most Providers Don’t Realize About Microentrepreneurs

Conventional measures of creditworthiness paint an incomplete — even misleading — picture of microbusiness owners, whose success often hinges on strong local networks and unconventional business strategies.

India’s Latest Advances in Financial Inclusion: A Day in Royyuru

See how India’s Aadhaar-enabled payments system is making digital payments easy and convenient in the village of Royyuru.

How to Make the Graduation Approach Work for Refugees

The graduation approach is proven to lift families out of extreme poverty. Organizations on the frontier of humanitarian crises say it also works for refugees.

Can User-Friendly Payment Methods Improve Repayment Rates?

When PEG Africa piloted more user-friendly mobile payment methods for its pay-as-you-go solar customers, users started paying more often and in significantly higher amounts than other customers.

What Keeps People from Paying with Their Phones?

To find out why more people aren't going digital in Ghana, CGAP partnered with pay-as-you-go solar company PEG Africa and mobile network operator Tigo Ghana.

Humanitarian Crises: Understanding Demand for Financial Services

Reaching low-income people with financial services during a crisis can help them overcome adversity – and it starts with understanding their needs.

Adapting the Graduation Approach for People with Disabilities

Here are nine lessons for how donors can adapt the graduation approach to help low-income people with disabilities build sustainable livelihoods.

Transactions Want to Be Free

Imagine a world where anyone could move money instantly across providers at no cost. Three trends are making free transactions more likely today than ever before.

A Practitioner and a Regulator Talk Digital Credit

Do the benefits of digital credit outweigh the risks for consumers? A practitioner and regulator share their viewpoints.

Cultivating Opportunities for Women in Agriculture

National surveys in Mozambique and Tanzania show that women in agriculture do not diversify their incomes as much as men do. Equal access to financial services could help women to generate new sources of income.

Traders in Refugee Camps: Overlooked Opportunity in Bulk Payments

Lolem Boyo Emilat is a trader in Kenya’s Kalobeyei settlement, where mobile payments have transformed her small business. Could bringing mobile money to more traders like Lolem be an overlooked opportunity to advance financial inclusion?

Remittance Frontiers: Banking Without Borders

TransferWise has launched “borderless” accounts, bringing cross-border banking to a new level. Could similar products serve communities in developing countries that depend on international remittances?

Can Emergency Cash Transfers Lead to Financial Inclusion?

From partnering with the right providers to removing policy constraints, there are several things development and humanitarian actors can do to forge a stronger link between humanitarian cash transfers and financial inclusion.

Using SMS Messaging to Strengthen Your Agent Network

Agents are an important element of mobile financial services, but managing a large agent network can be challenging. In Paraguay, SMS messaging proved a cost-effective solution.

Disaster Risk Insurance to Promote Resilience

A growing body of evidence suggests that disaster insurance makes low-income people more resilient to floods, earthquakes, and other disasters. What challenges must be overcome to make disaster insurance more widely available?

Are PAYGo Solar Companies a New Type of Microfinance Institution?

Are PAYgo solar companies a new breed of microfinance institution (MFI)? Many are engaged in a number of MFI-like activities and could benefit from lessons learned in the more mature MFI sector.

How SMS Messaging Can Change Financial Behaviors

Pilots with mobile money providers in the Philippines and Paraguay showed that simple SMS messaging can increase mobile wallet transactions.

Innovation in Mobile Money: What Are the Risks?

As mobile money continues to evolve, new kinds of fraud are emerging. Here are some steps that providers and regulators can take to keep up.