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How Did Bancolombia Create a Successful Rural Agent Network at Scale?

Bancolombia is a great example of a provider that's been successful in developing rural agent business models at scale, therefore playing a critical role in furthering financial inclusion. Here, we look at the factors that explain their success.

High Tech, High Touch: Bringing Formal Loans to Rural India

Despite its success developing digital public infrastructure to enable inclusive financial development, India still faces challenges in bringing formal credit to rural and low-income households. A new app supported by CGAP aims to provide a solution.

Financial Inclusion-Friendly G2P: Recommendations for Stakeholders

G2P transfer experiments during the COVID-19 pandemic collectively demonstrate the importance of “financial inclusion (FI)-friendly” G2P - intentional architecting and implementation that support active DFS usage beyond an initial payment.

When Fiat Fails for Remittances: Testing Cryptocurrency's Potential

Sanctions imposed on the Russian financial system have revealed shortcomings in cryptocurrency's current ability to boost inclusion – crypto users and their exchanges inhabit the offline world where the traditional financial system still holds sway.

Findex and G2P: Are Transfers Translating to Inclusion at Scale?

Governments are enrolling the unbanked into the formal financial system at scale in EMDEs, primarily to facilitate government-to-person (G2P) payments, but do all these accounts with funds flowing into them amount to financial inclusion? Not yet.

National Payment Systems in ECA Show Resilience in Crisis Times

Remittances channels are vital for the well-being of millions of low-income families in the ECA region. As international payment systems are disrupted, the integration of national payment systems have been filling some of the gap.

The Benefits of G2P Choice: Zambia Leads the Way

In 2017, Zambia introduced a government-to-person (G2P) payments model that lets beneficiaries choose the provider they want to use to receive their payment. Today, the benefits to the recipients, providers and government are clear.

Comparing India’s UPI and Brazil’s New Instant Payment System, PIX

Many countries are pressing forward with new systems to enable better, faster digital payments. Brazil's instant payment system, PIX, is among the newest and most exciting. How does it compare to India's well-known UPI system?

Will Facebook Soon Dominate Digital Payments in India, Indonesia?

As Facebook enters the highly regulated space of digital payments in India and Indonesia, it is partnering with local players to connect its virtual ecosystem with the cash economy, gain access to logistics networks and overcome regulatory hurdles.

How Paystack’s APIs Are Enabling Entrepreneurs in Nigeria

Paystack's open APIs for digital payments are helping thousands of African companies to launch new business models and deepen customer relationships.

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.

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.

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.

$4.9 Trillion Small Business Credit Gap: Digital Models to the Rescue

CGAP estimates that there is a $4.9 trillion credit gap for micro and small businesses in emerging markets.

Digital Payments Matter More for Public Services: 3 Reasons Why

Water utilities and other public service providers can benefit in at least three ways from digital payments.

How Bangladesh Digitized Education Aid for 10 Million Families

In just months, Bangladesh digitized financial aid payments for education to millions of families. What can other countries learn from this rapid transition to digital payments?

Building Rural Digital Ecosystems, One Small Payment at a Time

New research shows that digitizing everyday payments as person-to-person transfers can be a sustainable way for providers to reach customers in rural areas.

How Ghana Became One of Africa’s Top Mobile Money Markets

Mobile money account ownership tripled in Ghana from 2014 to 2017, making the country one of the fastest growing mobile money markets in Africa. How? Smart regulations played a key role.

Public Clearinghouse Could Shake Up China’s Mobile Payment Market

China will soon require payments providers, including Alipay and WeChat Pay, to connect to a public online payments clearinghouse. Here’s what we know so far about how this institution will work and what it could mean for mobile payments.

Super Platforms in Africa: Not if, but When

Super platforms like Ant Financial are likely to expand into Africa and impact financial services providers, regulators and customers.