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> Posted by Susy Cheston and Sonja E. Kelly, CFI
Aging is an issue that we all hope to face personally, if we haven’t already. As we prepare to participate in European Microfinance Week, we are more convinced than ever that this is a critical topic for the financial inclusion community to address. (If you are planning to be at European Microfinance Week too, make sure to check out our panel on the Sustainable Development Goals and financial inclusion!) In Europe, the aging of the population is well acknowledged. With average life expectancy in Europe among the highest in the world, at 77 years, the proportion of the population reaching older age is naturally growing. About 25 percent of Europe’s population is now over the age of 60, and that percentage is set to rise. The aging of the population is well understood in Europe, but what is less recognized is that the middle and lower-middle income countries of the world – the countries that encompass most of the world’s population – are already beginning to experience the same older age population boom. In most middle income countries, from Mexico to China, over-60s are the fastest growing cohort of the population. Aging is a product of successful development. Increased life expectancy, better family planning mechanisms, and higher quality of life all contribute to growth in the proportion of the population that is older.
Aging is a reality, but can it also represent an opportunity for financial institutions? The smart money is on providers who recognize that the answer is yes, and work to figure out how to respond.
We’ve created a list of activities, some practical and some research-oriented, we think would be valuable to close the gaps in financial inclusion for older people and for younger people who want to prepare for their older age. And, frankly, we would love for you to steal these ideas!
> Posted by Michael Miebach, President, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard
FI2020 Week is a global conversation on the key actions needed to advance financial inclusion, grounded in the findings of the recently launched FI2020 Progress Report. From November 2-6, 2015, stakeholders around the world are participating in more than 30 events and sharing their voices over social media, with #FI2020.
FI2020 Week offers a good opportunity to review the findings in the FI2020 Progress Report and to consider actions the global community needs to take to advance financial inclusion. This is of particular interest to me as I work every day to expand MasterCard’s payments platform in the Middle East and Africa, and in a volunteer capacity, I also serve on the board of directors of Accion.
The report asserts that it’s not enough to “build the rails” to enable payment and transaction access, but that “providers, regulators and support institutions need to ensure that the financial services that follow provide value and quality to the passengers who climb aboard.” Here is where interoperability is essential—if last mile customers are to benefit. Banks, telcos, merchants, and governments must be connected—despite different rules and technologies—in a way that is seamless to the user. From a customer perspective, that means ubiquity, safety, and utility—the trifecta of success in financial inclusion. It won’t work if all the stakeholders are competing to create their own end-to-end solutions, or operating in silos. It won’t work if we are creating islands, where the unbanked transact with each other and where data is used in proprietary ways to support individual business models, rather than being shared as a public good.
Now, a parent in Zimbabwe sends money to his daughter studying at university in South Africa using a mobile money operator connected to the global banking system. All he needs to do is go to an EcoCash agent and top up his mobile money account. His daughter then accesses the funds using a MasterCard debit card linked to the same EcoCash mobile money account to purchase text books, and pay university fees as well as other day-to-day expenses while at university in South Africa. This is ubiquity, safety, and utility put into action.
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> Posted by Allyse McGrath, Senior Associate, CFI
The Facebook page of JPay, a Florida-based company that provides a range of services to inmates in the U.S. prison system, is calling for visitation pictures – photos of families and their incarcerated loved ones. Happy images seem to echo the company’s statement that JPay is “the most trusted source for connecting incarcerated individuals with family and friends”. Money transfers are one primary element of the connection that JPay and others like it provide. JPay is one of the largest providers in the burgeoning field of financial services for the 2 million-plus inmates in the U.S. prison system. These providers are changing the way that families send money to their incarcerated loved ones and also the way in which inmates receive money upon their release. But has this change been good?
For those that might not know, money sent to inmates can be used in prison for things like making phone calls, sending emails, and buying food, toiletries, and winter clothes. To give you a sense, at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State, phone calls begin at $3.13, and emails are 33 cents. When prisoners are released, money accumulated from work in prison or sent from family and friends can be transferred onto stores of value like debit cards.
> Posted by Center Staff
What are the most important questions that need to be researched in the financial inclusion arena?
The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion will soon launch a fellows program to support research and thought leadership in financial inclusion – and we are calling on you to help! The purpose of this program will be to encourage independent researchers and analysts to examine some of the most important challenges in the financial inclusion arena. We plan to select a few priority research topics for fellows to examine.
Here’s where you come in. Below is a list of research topics that members of our Financial Inclusion 2020 team believe need answering. We’re checking in with you – our blog audience – to find out which topics you think are the most important to investigate. Please consider this list a starting point. Give us thumbs up or down on the topics listed, and propose topics of your own. Once we select the top priority questions, we will issue a call for proposals. Meanwhile, we offer this list to provoke a broader conversation about research needed in the financial inclusion field.
You can respond either in the comment block below, or by email to .
Technology-related topics
- Impact of ubiquitous internet access on the business models for financial inclusion. By 2020, the vast majority of the world’s people will have access to internet through smart phones and tablets. Internet access could transform the way financial service providers and customers interact and facilitate a richer interface with customers. What scenarios are possible and are providers ready to respond?
- Under what conditions do “on-ramps” lead to deeper inclusion? With the World Bank’s commitment to Universal Financial Access focused on connecting people to transaction accounts, the next question is how (and whether) such connections lead to active account usage or access to additional products. What are the cases of successful access expansion that have led to deeper inclusion and why did they succeed?
There is a need to enhance consumer awareness and confidence in doing electronic transactions
> Posted by Smita Aggarwal, Senior Program Director, the Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL)
The following post was originally published on Livemint.
On a recent visit to Sydney, Australia I needed some cash and I inserted my Indian debit card in an automated teller machine (ATM). Immediately after I put in my transaction request for cash withdrawal, I got a prompt that there would be a $3 charge for that transaction and I had to confirm with a “yes” before the transaction would be processed further. I withdrew my card and left. The e-payments code by Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the unified regulator responsible for market conduct, requires all service providers to provide certain mandatory information, including fees and charges, to users before or at the time users first perform transactions.
The experience in Australia shows that the display of charges just before the transaction is done has altered consumer behavior, apart from significantly reducing complaints. Increasing the usage of electronic transactions through ATMs, cards, internet, and mobile phones is a critical step towards digitizing our economy. However, there is a need to significantly enhance consumer awareness and confidence in doing electronic transactions and there could be lessons we can learn from what Australia has done.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
Coinciding with this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) program released its fourth annual ‘State of the Industry Report on Mobile Financial Services.’ I talked with Jennifer Frydrych, Insights Coordinator for the MMU program and one of the authors on the report, about the project’s findings. The conversation touched on new markets, shifts in the mobile payments mix, successes with products beyond payments, the main hurdles facing mobile money ecosystems, and more.
1. The mobile money industry has grown rapidly in recent years. Can you bring us up to date with some of the growth figures and dynamics?
In the past five years, mobile money services have spread across much of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. At the end of 2014, there were 255 live mobile money services across 89 markets, 36 more than in 2013. Mobile money is now available in 61 percent of developing markets globally. In terms of adoption and usage growth, 75 million additional mobile money accounts were opened globally in 2014, bringing the total number of registered accounts to 299 million. Importantly, account activity increased faster than account registration in 2014, and the total number of active mobile money accounts is now 103 million (up from 73 million in 2013). An increasing number of services are reaching scale: 21 services now have more than one million active accounts.
2. As of the last State of the Industry report, half of all live mobile money deployments were in sub-Saharan Africa. How has this distribution changed? What were some new or emerging markets of the past year?
There were 22 new services launches in 2014, of which half occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. The mobile money industry in sub-Saharan Africa continues to grow, and the region still accounts for just over half of all live services globally, and 60 percent of all active accounts. Much of this success can be attributed to East Africa; however we are now seeing exciting growth in mobile money uptake and active usage in West Africa.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
On Monday, Myanmar launched its first domestic online payment network. The payment platform centers on a partnership between 2C2P, a Southeast Asian payment services company with a history of digital finance work in the country, and Myanmar Payment Union (MPU), the national payment network set-up by the country’s central bank. The new platform allows MPU cardholders, currently 900,000 individuals and counting, to make online purchases in-country. The e-pay advancement is a promising step for financial inclusion in the country, which continues its recovery from economic isolation and military rule.
The Myanmar Payment Union, the country’s only domestic card-based payment system, launched in 2011, encompasses 20 banking partners, including three state-owned banks. In the time since MPU introduced banking cards and ATMs, card adoption has increased, with enormous growth in 2014, from roughly 200,000 cardholders early in the year to the current level of 900,000. With the new online payment system, businesses now need to sign onto the service via one of MPU’s partner banks, which will provide technical support and consultation throughout the process. On both the business and consumer end, achieving the necessary platform traction will require significant awareness building – quelling fundamental questions like: will my payment actually reach the merchant?
> Posted by Eric Zuehlke, Web and Communications Director, CFI
Financial inclusion stories and research are published daily, lauding various efforts to bring lower-income people into the formal banking fold. All progress deserves celebration, but also closer examination. When a new initiative takes effect, or a new service deployed, how does that advance us in achieving financial inclusion? A backdrop of sound measurement is critical. A BBVA research team, Noelia Cámara and David Tuesta, recently set out to construct an index that measures the extent of financial inclusion at the country or region level. The index is discussed and applied to 82 countries in the team’s new paper, Measuring Financial Inclusion: A Multidimensional Index. We were especially intrigued to learn that this research incorporates both supply and demand-side data. I recently sat down with Cámara to talk about the project, from challenges in measuring financial inclusion to the implications of the newly-available index.
1. What are the challenges in measuring financial inclusion?
Many issues arise when it comes to measuring financial inclusion. First, there is no single definition for financial inclusion universally accepted in the literature. Most definitions include three dimensions: use, quality, and access. However, when it comes to defining these dimensions, no consensus is found. For instance, the use of financial services is part of the financial inclusion concept, but it is not clear what “use of financial services” really means. Thus, several questions come to the fore: Do we consider having a bank account in the formal financial system to be a necessary condition for financial inclusion? Is having a pre-paid card or microinsurance enough to classify an individual as included? Is using electronic payment intermediation (e.g. paying bills with a mobile phone) a sufficient condition?
> Posted by Center Staff
Yesterday a digital finance event in Bogota hosted by the Colombian government and the Better Than Cash Alliance celebrated a pioneering business-to-business electronic banking program that’s led to over 300,000 Colombian coffee farmers receiving access to formal banking services. Launched in 2006 by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC), the Smart Coffee ID Card program offers the farmers represented by FNC with a dual identification/e-banking card that can be used for payments, debits, and savings. It now encompasses over 8 million transactions totaling nearly $1 billion. The event launched a Better Than Cash Alliance case study on the Smart Coffee ID Card program, which finds that the FNC initiative is a benchmark example of how transitioning from cash to e-payments in emerging economies can lead to increased safety, productivity, growth, and greater quality of life.
> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
Amidst all the excitement about disruptive fintech innovators it helps to sort out what innovations are actually at play. Australia Wealth Investors, together with KPMG-Australia and Australia’s Financial Services Council, have created a list of the top 50 fintech innovators for 2014, based on a combination of ability to raise capital and subjective judgment about the degree of innovation or disruption the company represents.
I clicked on all 50 (so you don’t have to) to get a sense of where the action really is. Here’s my quick and dirty categorization. It may help to read this to the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas”, starting with:
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