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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.

Cash Transfers and Mobile Money: Making it Work

There are many reasons to be excited about mobile phones as a way to distribute cash transfers, such as government payments or NGO cash-for-work programs.

Branchless Banking Headlines & Highlights: Updates from Africa and Beyond

Summer is now officially over here in Washington and the busy fall season is off to a quick start. If you are just getting back into high gear, maybe this is a good time for us to recap some of the things we’ve been discussing on the blog over the last couple months, some of the latest news that’s caught our attention, and some things to keep your eye on in the coming weeks.

Partnering with Private Sector on Branchless Banking

Working with commercial actors with multi-million dollar balance sheets is incredibly rewarding and can be very different from interactions with traditional MFIs.

Microfinance Should Have Started with Savings

Much of the world is in trouble today because of debt, too much borrowing, presumably not enough saving, by individuals, companies, countries and groups of countries.

Innovation in Branchless Banking at the Bangladesh Post Office

On a recent visit to Bangladesh Sarah Rotman and I met with Post Office Director General, Mobasherur Rahman, at his office in the middle of busy downtown Dhaka to hear about his foray into the world of branchless banking.

Mobile Money Moving Rapidly Ahead in Haiti

Despite the difficulties in Haiti during 2010 and into 2011 (earthquake, infrastructure destruction, elections and political unrest, cholera epidemic, tropical storms, floods, and gas shortages), the response to HMMI by the mobile operators, technology providers, financial institutions, institutional users, and Haitians has been very positive, with both Tcho Tcho Mobile and Ti-Cash launched before the end of 2010.

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.

Can Mobile Money Support Post-Conflict Development?

There's been a great deal of excitement over the last few years regarding the potential for mobile money to solve a host of development problems. An increasing number of post-conflict countries are all experimenting with or thinking about mobile money implementations. In addition to the normal issues and challenges facing policymakers and service providers, post-conflict and post-disaster countries face additional problems that merely serve to exacerbate the overall challenges with mobile money.

Financial Inclusion in the U.S.:Spending Time In Our Own Backyard

As we look globally for innovative business models and technologies, it’s a shame how little we (as two Americans) focus on our backyard in the U.S. Despite our comfort drawing similarities and lessons across markets as different as Brazil, India, and Kenya, we seem to assume that the U.S., with its technology and banking infrastructure, relative wealth, and uniquely complex regulatory context, is truly different. To test this and see what we might uncover “locally,” we attended the 6th Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum in June to learn more about the state of the art in the domestic financial inclusion world and look for ways where global and local conversations overlap and can be integrated.

So Where Are We in the Link Between G2P and Financial Services?

The link to financial inclusion is one that can often get forgotten in the quest for payment efficiency.

State Bank of Pakistan Removes Barriers to Branchless Banking

In March 2008, the State Bank of Pakistan introduced some of the first regulations anywhere in the world designed specifically to encourage branchless banking. The regulations allowed a number of different business models and permitted agents to deliver financial services on behalf of banks.

The Cost-Benefit of Electronic Payment Systems: The Case of India

Electronic payments hold particular promise, and the key question is: What is the cost-benefit for a government to connect all households to an electronic payment system.

How to Run With Mobile Money and Not Fall

In this post, Dalberg colleague, Matt Shakhovskoy, identifies some internal challenges at MNOs that prevent them from delivering success with mobile money.

Islamic Microfinance Challenge: A Summary

A business model for Islamic microfinance: what does it need?

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.

Looking For a “Killer App” For the Poor? Sell Stress Reduction

We need to start treating willpower as a scarce and important resource. That’s the point pushed in a recent New Republic piece on “What can’t more poor people escape poverty?” And it’s a product opportunity for those designing financial services for the poor.

Can Collecting Savings in Rural Areas Be Profitable?

The importance and role of savings with respect to the economic and social development of developing countries and of African countries in particular have long been recognized.

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.

Does Savings Help Protect MFIs from Political Interference?

Until recently, microfinance in India (really microcredit) had been driven by innovators and entrepreneurs, but also enabled by government policies such as of priority sector lending and regulatory restrictions prohibiting deposit mobilization for most MFIs.