Andria Thomas is an Associate Partner in the Washington, DC office of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she advises companies, governments and social sector organizations on strategies for inclusive growth in emerging markets.
Person-to-government (P2G) payments receive considerably less attention from the global financial inclusion community than payments such as person-to-person or government-to-person. A new report aims to address this gap and to provide a roadmap for future P2G payment digitization efforts.
Open APIs bring the promise of expanding the reach and benefits of financial services for the unbanked. But there remain no real examples of widely adopted open APIs for mobile money.
Though it may be a long way off, the "what if" of social networks playing a role in international remittances is exciting. Networks like Facebook and China's RenRen increasingly reach financially-excluded portions of the population and may have the potential to generate significant transaction volumes in places where m-wallets have struggled.
The landscape of international remittances through branchless banking continues to evolve, with a variety of new players and models entering the market and driving change.
Since remittances to developing countries were estimated at about $351 billion for 2011, capturing even a small share of this market could be a transformational opportunity for mobile money providers – right?
