Overview
CGAP’s Technology Program is co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to demonstrate technology-based models that dramatically expand the reach of appropriate financial services to greater numbers of poor people. Technologies such as mobile phones and wireless communications, hosted software applications, and data mining all cut costs, but the real challenge is to figure out practical, sustainable business solutions that can scale up and be easily replicated. The Program learns about these potential solutions through experimentation – testing unproven approaches even in markets that are high-risk, aiming for big successes, and learning from any failures.
CGAP has made considerable progress in demonstrating and learning about “branchless banking,” including mobile phone banking, as a low-cost delivery channel for rural and remote areas. Branchless banking uses mobile phones and SIM cards, or payment cards and card readers, to identify customers and send transaction data. Cash is handled at post offices, gas stations, or mom-and-pop stores that act as banking ‘agents.’
To date CGAP has helped shape 14 projects with microfinance institutions, banks, mobile network operators, and payment system providers targeting millions of poor unbanked people in Colombia, Ecuador, India, Kenya, Maldives, Mali, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, and South Africa.
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