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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.

Let’s Play: Making Savings Fun

The borlette system in Haiti is hard to ignore. Part casino, part dream parlor, part bank, the borlette network gleams on the retail landscape.

Branchless Banking Gains Momentum in India

Over the past several months, we have taken a close look at the branchless banking industry in a few key countries. We have presented our learning from Brazil and Mexico over the last few weeks. Today we offer a snapshot of the conditions for branchless banking in India drawn from a summary note of the Indian scene completed at the end of 2010.

Showcasing Successes in Banking Beyond Branches in Latin America

The Bridges to Cash showcase recognizes players who have built a dense and sustainable network of cash merchants where people cash-in and cash-out conveniently from their electronic accounts.

Delivering Government Payments in the Wilds of Northern Kenya

Social transfer programmes all over the globe are recognizing the value of paying cash grants through some form of financial “account”, accounts increasingly administered by a network of payment agents.

Drivers of Mobile Money Profitability

This post is the second in the series on “Five Business Case Insights on Mobile Money.” In the first post, we shared with you a detailed presentation on the five insights. Here we explain further the first three insights.

Mexico: Promising Moves Towards New Banking Models

Over the past several months, we have taken a close look at the branchless banking industry in a few key countries. Last week we presented our learnings from Brazil. Today we continue with our analysis of Mexico and share this summary note on the Mexican branchless banking industry.

Delivering on the Savings Promise of Mobile Money

By planning payments, households can seek to stabilize their daily circumstances, develop opportunities to improve their condition in the future, and mitigate shocks that can set their families back.

Branchless Banking and Microinsurance: A Perfect Marriage?

In previous blogs Mark Pickens has lamented the lack of innovation by branchless banking providers in products that go beyond payments. But there are some green-shoots of innovation. In this blog we take a look at some examples of early experiments that we have seen involving in micro-insurance.

Commercial Investment Landscape in Branchless Banking

This blog post summarizes a quick review of commercial investments in mobile financial services and branchless banking. We focused our review on equity deals between 2005 and 2010 involving mobile payment companies, agent companies, payment platforms and others providers that we knew were targeting the financially excluded in developing countries.

The Power of Successful Market-led Savings Mobilization

Successful savings products can transform financial institutions, leading to explosive growth in numbers of clients, funds for on-lending and income.

Familias en Acción: A Financial Inclusion Strategy

In this post, our guest bloggers discuss the Government of Colombia’s efforts to use Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs as a gateway to financial inclusion.

Five Business Case Insights on Mobile Money

Today, we share with you a presentation that describes in detail five ways mobile network operators (MNOs) can think about the mobile money business case. MNOs across the globe are investing millions to develop and market mobile money. Estimates claim at least 30 implementations in Africa where MNO-driven financial services are an important part of the financial inclusion landscape. Despite the bets being placed by MNOs, the business case remains uncertain in almost every implementation.

Islamic Microfinance in Tanzania

Tanzania eco-Volunteerism’s (TeV) honey project is a community development program providing rural poor communities of Tanzania with an innovative microfinance model that is in complete compliance with Islamic guidelines for business and finance.

GCASH Supports the Philippine Government’s Programs

Globe Telecom is a leading telecommunications company in the Philippines that runs the GCASH mobile money service.

Islamic Microfinance Challenge: Profiling Tameer Bank, Pakistan

Pakistan does not have any visible Islamic microfinance banks or institutions, so this is a critical project to move forward, albeit in a staged way to limit risk and cost and making sure that we apply new learning as we go.

G2P Payments for Flood Victims in Pakistan

Within just a few weeks this past fall, United Bank Limited (UBL) in Pakistan was able to design, procure, and distribute over one million VISA debit cards to the flood-affected citizens of Pakistan following the devastating flood.

Branchless Banking, G2P and Large Volume Payments

As branchless banking services reach the scale needed to be able to serve large segments of the population of a country, they are starting to strike partnerships with governments, businesses and not-for-profit organizations that need to make payments to large numbers of people.

Microcredit Deserves Support, not Suppression

Owing to its innovative program design and practices, microcredit reaches many poor people who lack access to formal finance. This is clearly a major gain that protects the poor and other disadvantaged groups from resorting to informal loans at extortionate rates.

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.