Blog

Côte d’Ivoire: A Perfect Time for Mobile Money?

Côte d’Ivoire has seen its mobile money industry make significant progress in recent years. The latest results from the sector suggest good prospects moving forward. At the end of Q3 2012, there were 2.6 million registered mobile money clients across all providers in the market. This post explores the recent market dynamic in this west African country.

Financial Crime: Risks For New Formal Finance Customers

There are a range of financial crimes that may occur in the financial inclusion space. This post highlights the most relevant risk elements from a financial inclusion perspective.

Innovations in Islamic Microfinance for Small Farmers in Sudan

To enable financial inclusion for small farmers, the entire value chain needs to be understood and supported, and financial products have to be designed keeping in mind their unique needs. We at Bank of Khartoum believe that Islamic microfinance products can effectively reach small farmers in Sudan when customized to their needs.

Can Retailers and MNOs Provide More Efficient Financial Services?

When it comes to financial inclusion, retail has been one of the late driving forces in Latin America. In the past, banks have been unable to cater to over 50% percent of households in the region. Retailers have filled some of this gap and have started offering formal financial services to millions of previously unbanked customers.

Where The Wild Things Are: Measuring Market Development Progress

Being able to measure and demonstrate progress are critical issues as taxpayers and other funders of donors and DFIs require explanations and justifications of the use of their limited resources. A handful of donors are starting to experiment with different tools for measuring progress in agricultural and other non-financial markets. It is difficult work, especially when attempting to measure attributable and sustainable changes to a market system.

What If Poor People Do Care about Privacy of Their Financial Data

Do base-of-pyramid consumers value privacy of their financial data? How might these concerns impact uptake for new financial services and delivery channels? Share your insight from the field in the comments section.

Why And How Should We Measure Progress In Market Development?

With increasing scrutiny of aid budgets in donor countries, the pressures to prove impact of development programs are higher than ever before. It is relatively easy to assess impacts in a backward-looking fashion when there is already some record of progress, but measurement challenges are more daunting at the start of a program, when impact assessment needs to be forward-looking.

The Savings Conundrum: Lessons from A Pack of Cards

The simple behavior around a pack of cards gives us an enormous amount of insight about how a financial product can be designed to accommodate a quest for surprise whilst saving.

Re-Banking the De-Banked in Mexico

Earlier this year CGAP, in partnership with Bancomer, commissioned IDEO.org, the non-profit arm of the California firm known for its human-centered design methodology, to create a savings product that would meet the needs of low income Mexicans.

What Is Keeping Kenya From Becoming More “Cash Lite”?

A couple of weeks ago, Daryl Collins and her team at BFA introduced granular, intra-day transaction data collected in the summer of 2011 across a sample of 61 urban and rural retail merchants in Kenya. The results starkly showed that cash still dominates the payment transactions in these areas, with mobile money representing being used for not even 1% of transactions. In this blog, they ask the question “What would move more customers and merchants to more cash-lite payment behavior?”

Financial Literacy for Small Farmers in Kenya Via TV

In March of 2012, a new regional television program launched in Kenya which aims to provide information to millions of farmers on how to improve their incomes and livelihoods. Funded by DfID's AECF (the Africa Entrepreneurship Challenge Fund), "Shamba Shape-Up" profiles a farm each week and suggests improvements that demonstrate financial principles and teaches farmers how to grow more food, make more money and build better lives for their families.

A Better Way to Deliver Aid

To increase the speed of delivery and put decision-making power into the hands of beneficiaries, the international aid community is transitioning away from the distribution of in-kind goods to the direct transfer of cash payments to assist those in need. The Visa Innovation Grants Program is taking this one step further by supporting innovation and implementation of electronic payments.

The Implications of Data Tracking on Financial Inclusion

This debate over internet data tracking has important implications for financial inclusion and in particular new channels like mobile banking that are expanding access to finance to consumers in low-access markets. Some see the end business model for these channels as providing low-cost or free services to consumers, making their profits instead by selling their data to companies looking to offer these consumers tailored products. In this post, we present two different viewpoints from Rafe Mazer, who focuses on financial consumer protection, and Sarah Rotman, who focuses on product innovation.

Taking Market Development Approaches to Financial Access

How can aid agencies begin to ‘take’ market development thinking and practice into their efforts to enhance financial services for poor people? Drawing from wider experience, here are five basic starting points to consider.

From Social Protection to Financial Inclusion and Beyond

The idea that linking social protection payments to financial inclusion initiatives can reduce poverty is gaining increasing traction. In February of this year, CGAP published a paper on Social Cash Transfers and Financial Inclusion. In April, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held a workshop examining the potential of financially-inclusive electronic G2P payments. One of the core goals of the Better Than Cash Alliance, launched in September by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Citi, Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, UN Capital Development Fund, USAID, and Visa Inc., is to reduce the reliance on cash for G2P and other transfers in order to improve the effectiveness of aid.

How Best Can We Listen to Clients?

Barring a few steadfast voices over the last two decades, the financial inclusion field as a whole has only started coming around to ‘client-centricity’ as compared to others in the development field or even commercial industries. Everyone seems to agree that the starting point is to understand clients better. But these discussions become about methods very quickly.

OPIC and the Global Microfinance Industry

As the U.S. Government’s Development Finance Institution, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has a mandate to help channel private capital to address some of the world’s toughest development challenges. One of the core ways we carry out that mission is by working with microfinance institutions. In recent years, OPIC has tailored its financing and insurance products to better serve the microfinance sector.

Is M-PESA Replacing Cash in Kenya?

How far away is Kenya from the goal of cash-lite? Between July and August 2011, Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA) conducted an intensive field study within an urban and a rural pilot area to study the mode and size of intra-day cash flows at the customer-to-merchant interface and the merchant-to-supplier interface. This research finds that despite Kenya’s reputation for being a leader in mobile money, cash is still king.

Expanding the Funding Horizon for Financial Access

There is broad recognition within the development community that donors have contributed significantly to building microfinance institutions that serve the poor around the world. But isn’t it time donors updated their investment portfolio to reflect new thinking and the new reality on the ground?

A Roadmap for MFIs to Analyze Volatility of Savings Portfolios

In the past five years, the microfinance community has encouraged microfinance institutions (MFIs) to broaden the scope of product offerings for their clients beyond microcredit, especially by offering savings products. However, in the microfinance sector, quantitative analysis of depositor behavior and aggregate savings balances is still nascent. Instead of using a savings volatility analysis to determine potential withdrawals, MFIs often estimate the amount of savings that should be held in cash or liquid assets, or they simply follow guidelines from regulators, funders or global networks.