Recent Blogs
Blog
Understanding Typical Financial Behavior in Myanmar
A recent survey of 5,500 households is a gold mine of information on the demand and supply of financial services in Myanmar. Providers, policy makers, donors and investors already are starting to use the data to guide their policies.Blog
Digital Finance: Catalyzing New Energy Business Models
Over 1.3 billion people worldwide live without access to electricity. Modern, small-scale solar solutions are now on the market, and digital finance is going a long way toward making these more affordable and accessible in poor communities.Blog
Policymakers Weigh In on the Graduation Approach
Through a series of video interviews with CGAP, policymakers and academics from all over the world weigh in on how the graduation approach can help the extreme poor find a pathway to a sustainable livelihood.Blog
Picturing Financial Inclusion in Africa
The CGAP Photo Contest, now in its ninth year, continues to receive a growing number of standout photographs from Africa.Blog
bKash Bangladesh: What Explains its Fast Start?
bKash is the fastest growing provider of mobile financial services in Bangladesh, having registered 11 million accounts in just 30 months. Several factors have combined to help bKash be an early success in a relatively new market.Blog
Ten Lessons on Tracking Changes in Clients’ Lives
The Social Performance Task Force uncovered 10 lessons for financial service providers seeking to integrate social goals into their business models.Blog
Using Human-Centered Design for e-Payment Systems in Indonesia
A team of designers and researchers, using human-centered design, set out to discover what would encourage both merchants and clients in Indonesia to move from cash to e-payment systems.Blog
Transforming Payments through mPOS: Perspectives from Indonesia
For traditional merchants in Indonesia, cash is still a mainstay of doing business. CGAP and partners set out to understand what might motivate more merchants to use digital forms of payment, particularly mobile point-of-service (mPOS) devices.Blog
Financial Inclusion in Cambodia is Trending Digital
In Cambodia, where 80% of the population lives in rural areas and fewer than 20% of adults have access to financial services, digital finance could be a financial inclusion game-changer.Blog
Can India Achieve Financial Inclusion within the Next Few Years?
The new Government of India has made financial inclusion one of the cornerstones of its policies and has set the target of every adult having a financial account by August 2015.Blog
YouthStart: Training Banks to Serve Young Customers
Youth have become a core concern in many African economies, yet most financial institutions are not equipped to address them as real potential customers.Blog
Analyzing the Business Case for Youth Savings
Serving young clients can be difficult for banks driven by short-term profit goals. But capturing the youth market can help give financial service providers a competitive edge in the long-run.Blog
Microinsurance: the Next Generation of Impact Investments
For investors looking to have an impact in emerging markets by building sustainable businesses, microinsurance is a growing niche.Blog
Is Tanzania Ready for Interoperability in Mobile Money?
Even though interoperability could potentially benefit the mobile financial services market, thus far there have been few attempts to get mobile money systems to work together. It may be too early for interoperability in some areas, Tanzania seems ready.Blog
Is Kenya Ready for an MVNO?
Kenya recently granted MVNO licenses to several new companies, allowing them to provide mobile money services without building new cellular infrastructure. This could shake up the mobile money market in Kenya, which has been dominated by Safaricom.Blog
Buying Insurance – With Your Groceries – in Brazil, Colombia
Retail distribution of insurance comes with consumer protection challenges. Regulations in countries like Brazil aim to increase information offered to consumers, but supporting customers in navigating the process of buying and using insurance can still be difficult for sales staff.Blog
New Data Shows Only 6% of India is Aware of Mobile Money
Financial inclusion in India has the mandate at the highest level of policy making, but the market has yet to respond positively to regulations that allow both public and private actors to pursue digitized payment services. Understanding demand for financial services is key to design services that reach scale.Blog
Enabling Data-Driven Financing for Smallholder Farmers
Mobilizing technology, such as smartphones, tablets, and the Internet, holds a tremendous opportunity to provide financial services for smallholders and to empower them to use data that is critical to their businesses in better ways.Blog
Mapping Financial Inclusion with FSP Maps and MIX FINclusionLab
There is a distinct need for high-quality data and analysis tools to answer questions about the advancement of financial inclusion.Blog