Recent Blogs
Blog
Global Landscape of Digital Finance Plus
To illustrate the global landscape of Digital Finance Plus, CGAP has identified 55 companies providing innovative solutions in the energy, water, health and agriculture sectors.Blog
Improving Education with Financial Innovation, Chapter-by-Chapter
Kytabu is a Kenyan-based company that offers a textbook subscription service where users can pay in small increments for individual chapters of textbooks and read the content on their cell phones. The company hopes to make educational materials much more accessible and affordable in Kenya.Blog
Expanding Water Services with Digital Finance
Upon realizing that rural community water projects were often unsustainable due to poor accounting systems, Grundfos conceptualized a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) model that improves community water management by increasing transparency and reducing the reliance on cash.Blog
Increasing Clean Energy Access through Digital Finance
Angaza is one of many new businesses helping to increase access to clean energy by providing innovative financing options.Blog
Addressing Big Development Challenges with Financial Innovation
Financial innovation has great potential to help solve big development challenges in access to energy, water, education, health and agriculture.Blog
Electronic Delivery of Cash Transfers in India: The Agent Story
The G2P ecosystem in Andhra Pradesh offers an opportunity to advance financial inclusion, and also offers many lessons as direct benefit transfers are rolled out across India.Blog
Technology is not Actually a Barrier for Very Poor G2P Recipients
For recipients of social cash transfers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, technology - whether a smart card or mobile phone - is rarely a barrier to use for recipients.Blog
Is it Reasonable to Expect DFIs to Build Markets?
Beyond investing in individual MFIs, how can DFIs facilitate broader development of pro-poor financial service markets?Blog
Advancing Financial Inclusion for Women in Africa
This blog discusses what role policy makers and regulators can play to advance financial inclusion for women in Africa.Blog
Closing the MSME Credit Gap for the Informal Sector
An estimated 80 percent of enterprises in developing economies - approximately 280-340 million - are informal firm. Bringing these enterprises into the formal sector requires specialized approaches, due to the varying degree of informality across countries.Blog
What If The Poor Weren't Marginalized?
The 2013 CGAP Photo Contest Winners showcases how poor people's lives are made better if they are not marginalized financially.Blog
Jipange KuSave, M-Shwari, and the Influence of Startups
Even though startups often fail, their ideas and lessons can inform the next innovations in expanding access to financial services. The case of Jipange KuSave and M-Shwari is a great example of how one "failed" startup can enabling another's success.Blog
Closing the Credit Gap for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
Micro, small and medium enterprises face many obstacles in developing countries, but access to finance remains by far the most cited obstacle experienced by firms trying to formalize, grow and increase productivity.Blog
Can MFIs Leverage Mobile Banking to Serve Customers Better?
When given the choice of using a mobile payment platform - bKash - or a traditional bank branch, 42% of business borrowers in a BRAC pilot chose to use both options for making payments.Blog
The Worrying Trend of Interest Rate Caps in Africa
Many countries in Africa have established interest rate ceilings to protect consumers from high interest rates charged by microlenders. However, despite good intentions, interest rate ceilings can actually hurt low-income populations by limiting their access to finance and reducing price transparency.Blog
FinMark Trust and Financial Market Development in South Africa
At a time when neither the government nor the private sector in South Africa were clear about the obstacles to reaching the base of the pyramid with financial services, FinMark Trust demonstrated how an effective market facilitator can develop an evidence base to inform policy and approaches.Blog
FI2020: Scarcity, Tunneling and Financial Inclusion
The pressure and distraction of living in scarcity - constantly having too little and constantly worrying about making day-to-day ends meet - ultimately affects poor people's decision-making abilities. Evidence suggests that this "scarcity" framework has serious implications for financial inclusion, especially regarding the uptake of new products and services.Blog
Using Mobile Banking for New Microfinance Business Models
BanKO is starting to blur the lines between microfinance and mobile banking by leveraging a network of agents to manage remote customer registration and due diligence, helping it to run more efficiently and at lower costs.Blog
Understanding Customers for Financial Innovation in Ghana
The branchless banking market in Ghana is promising but has not gained traction as expected. CGAP and Tigo Cash decided to collaborate in order to better understand what’s preventing Ghanaian customers from actively using mobile money.Blog