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5 Insights into Credit Scoring for Smallholders

Agricultural lending remains a frontier area even as the alternative lending space fills up with new players. Here are some early insights from CGAP's work on alternative credit scoring for smallholder farmers in Uganda.

Helping or Hurting? 10 Facts About Digital Credit in Tanzania

A nationally representative phone survey shows who's using digital credit, how they're using it, and whether it's living up to the hype of helping families cope with emergencies.

When Savings Aren’t Enough: How Low-Income Bangladeshis Use Loans

Today, some 25 million Bangladeshis borrow from microfinance institutions. Financial diaries from central Bangladesh show how poor people are using their loans, from coping with emergencies to on-lending to others.

Who Are Kenya’s Financially Excluded?

In Kenya, where nearly everyone knows about mobile money and a majority live within walking distance of an agent, why do nearly 2 in 10 adults lack access to formal financial services? And what can be done to reach them?

Merchant Payments: What About the Customers?

Shifting retail payments away from cash to digital instruments will require strong buy-in from end customers, who tend to like cash. How might they be persuaded?

Digital Innovations in Smallholder Agricultural Insurance

Fewer than 1 percent of smallholder farmers in Africa have agricultural insurance. Digital technologies, such as satellite imaging, could greatly expand access to insurance in Africa and around the world.

Want Your Customers to Save More? Use Behavioral Economics

A behavioral economics experiment in Tanzania increased customers' savings by up to 11 percent using SMS messages about the balances of better savers.

Will Digital Payments Unlock Financial Access for Small Business?

Bundling digital payments with services that address common challenges for merchants could expand access to finance for small businesses.

Mapping Africa’s Latest Innovations in Digital Finance

CGAP received nearly 200 proposals from digital financial services providers across Africa interested in piloting new products. A look at those proposals — from 30 countries — shows that innovations are spreading beyond hot spots like Kenya.

The Secret Life of Mobile Money Pricing

Mobile money fees are often viewed as a barrier to financial inclusion, but they can play an important role in building healthy markets for digital financial services.

Digital Credit: Data Sharing Can Improve Product Diversity

In a CGAP and M-Kopa pilot in Kenya, customers with greater control over their credit histories took up more credit and were more likely to pay it off in full.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Can Digital Savings Reduce Risks in Digital Credit?

An experiment in Tanzania suggests that offering savings and credit on the same mobile wallet can lead to more responsible borrowing.

Responsible Digital Credit for Merchants: Insights from Kenya

As digital credit expands rapidly in East Africa and elsewhere, offering credit responsibly is becoming increasingly important. These insights from Kenyan merchants who use Kopo Kopo’s Grow cash advance product point toward some best practices for digital merchant credit.