Blog

Digital Finance and the Future of Competition Policy

As tech giants disrupt financial services, they are giving urgency to questions around competition policy. Here are five questions that policy makers in developing countries should be asking about how to ensure fair play.

Deposit Insurance: The Last Line of Defense for E-Money?

Should deposit insurance cover e-money? The answer may not be the same for every country, but here are two lessons that apply across markets.

Zoona Is Putting APIs at the Core of Its Business: Here’s Why

What began as a side project has become central to Zoona's plans for growth. In this blog post, Zoona executives Brett Magrath and Bridgid Thomson discuss the importance of APIs at the company.

Smart Phones, Smart Partners: Linking Asset Finance and Microfinance

One company offers microcredit. The other offers PAYGo financing for smartphones, tablets and solar home systems. In what may be a template for other microfinance institutions, they are helping each other to reach more low-income customers.

A Vision for Collaborative Customer ID Verification in Africa

Technology has the capacity to improve financial inclusion in Africa, but this value can be unlocked only if African leaders reduce the burden of customer ID checks.

Bringing Digital Finance Agents to the Last Mile in Indonesia

A recent CGAP publication identifies six principles for viable agent networks in rural areas. In this post, we look at how where Indonesia stands against these principles.

BTPN Wow! Using Open APIs to Bring E-Commerce to Its 250,000 Agents

By connecting its agents to e-commerce platforms, BTPN is giving agents and end-customers in Indonesia more reasons to use its mobile banking service.

Mapping Fintech Innovations in the Arab World

Where is fintech innovation happening in the Arab world? What types of solutions are emerging? CGAP shares preliminary results from our research on fintech in a region with roughly 140 million financially excluded adults.

Open Data and the Future of Banking

Although growing numbers of low-income people are entering the formal financial system, many are not yet leveraging its full value. Emerging regimes for data sharing and payments flexibility have the potential to bypass traditional financial sector development and give poor customers better products and more choices.

The Path to Financial Health Begins in Adolescence

It is critical that youth financial inclusion programs tailor interventions based on young people's life stage to achieve long-term impact on financial health.

Where Youth Join Trust Groups, Not Insurgency Groups

By providing a combination of financial and nonfinancial services to over 16,000 smallholders, a social enterprise in northern Nigeria is harnessing the power of agriculture to create jobs for youth and improve livelihoods.

4 Keys to a Successful Developer Portal for Digital Finance APIs

Here are some practical tips on how digital financial services providers can build a first-rate developer portal for their APIs.

Former PAYGo CFO: Smart Subsidies Can Scale Energy Financing

Well-designed subsidies could create a stronger foundation for the solar home system industry and enable it to reach more low-income customers, according to entrepreneur and former PAYGo executive Joshua Romisher.

When Youth Entrepreneurship Training Meets Financial Inclusion

By working together to integrate entrepreneurship training and financial inclusion in Africa, youth-serving organizations and financial services providers could help young people build successful businesses and create jobs.

A New Generation of Government-to-Person Payments Is Emerging

Advances in payment infrastructure are enabling governments to channel payments through multiple providers, giving people greater choice over how to receive payments. This is an important shift with implications for financial services providers, recipients of government payments and financial inclusion.

Cloud Computing for Financial Inclusion: Lessons from the Philippines

For the first time, the Philippine central bank has allowed a bank to move its core banking operations to the cloud. Its approach, balancing caution with forward thinking, holds lessons for regulators in other countries.

Inclusive Growth vs. Household Finance: A False Choice

What’s better for inclusive economic growth: expanding access to financial services among individuals or businesses? Emerging evidence suggests they’re both critical.

Regulator’s Friend or Foe? Cloud Computing in Financial Inclusion

Financial regulators in emerging markets shouldn’t fear cloud computing. When regulated and supervised properly, it can be a boon to financial institutions trying to reach underserved customers. Here are some tips for regulators and supervisors.

Has Fintech Closed the Credit Gap? Not by a Long Shot

If funders want to spur job creation and economic growth, they’ll need to close the credit gap for small businesses in emerging markets. But to do this, they can’t depend solely on fintech.

Cheaper Remittances: How Malaysia and the Philippines Paved the Way

Globally, people pay an average fee of 6.9 percent to send money to family and others abroad. In one of Asia’s largest remittance corridors, between Malaysia and the Philippines, the average fee is only 3.7 percent. Smart policies have played an important role in bringing prices down.