Mark Pickens

Mark Pickens is a Director of Emerging Market Solutions at Visa Inc. He’s based in Kigali, where he is part of the team working on the launch of an interoperable mobile money ecosystem in Rwanda. Mark joined Visa in 2011 with a decade of experience designing financial products geared to reaching unbanked consumers. Prior to Visa, Mark helped design and launch CGAP’s Technology Program which was one of the earliest socially-motivated investors at the nexus of electronic delivery channels and financial services for unbanked consumers. He has consulted to banks, mobile network operators, microfinance institutions, and technology start-ups in two dozen markets. His work is quoted in Wired, The Economist and The Banker, and he has instructed on microfinance at Wharton School of Business and Johns Hopkins. Pickens studied at the Institute of Design at Stanford University and holds a Master’s from Columbia University. He has lived and worked extensively in Africa and Asia, and is currently based in Rwanda.

By Mark Pickens

Blog

The Internet and Mobile Money – Scenarios for 2020

In 2009, CGAP and DFID talked with over 200 technology and finance leaders from 30 countries to determine how branchless banking, including mobile banking, might look in the year 2020.
Blog

What Is Che Guevara Doing in this Bank?

We often think of branchless banking without looking at the nonprofits working in the community for social and economic development.
Research

Banking the Poor via G2P Payments

In this Focus Note, we look at government-to-person (G2P) payments, which include social transfers as well as wage and pension payments. With appropriate experimentation, these payments have the potential to become a vehicle for extending financial inclusion and improving the welfare of poor people.
Research

Window on the Unbanked: Mobile Money in the Philippines

This Brief, a joint effort of CGAP and the GSM Association, discusses the results of the first study on mobile money and the unbanked—those without access to formal financial services—estimated to be almost 4 billion worldwide.
Research

Scenarios for Branchless Banking in 2020

The growing use of branchless banking channels over the coming years is inevitable in most countries. But it’s far less certain whether large numbers of the unbanked poor will use these alternative channels for financial services beyond payments, such as savings and credit.