Recent Blogs

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Digitizing G2P Payments: Lessons from Indonesia

Indonesia's digitization transformation for G2P payments showcases what can be achieved when strong government commitment and collaboration are combined with advanced technologies.
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How Can Regulators Enable Last-Mile Agent Networks?

Extensive and inclusive cash-in/cash-out (CICO) agent networks are key to ensuring DFS access in rural areas. Regulators play an essential role here by enabling DFS providers to innovate agent network models that are sustainable in rural areas.
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Cash vs. Digital? Unleashing the Power of DFS through Agent Networks

The rise of DFS has sparked debate on cash's future in developing economies. But, despite increasing adoption of DFS, cash prevails in most global economies, emphasizing agent networks' crucial role as enablers rather than disruptors.
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Lessons From 4 Examples on the Leading Edge of Climate-Focused G2P

All G2P programs contribute to climate adaptation to some extent, with examples in India, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Philippines showing us how specific program design features can support greater climate adaptation for recipients and their households.
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Climate-Focused G2P: Beyond Disaster Response

The current focus of G2P programs on emergency response is insufficient to support long-term climate change adaptation. Long-term adaptation must be considered, and designed into programs, to reduce intergenerational vulnerability to climate change.
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Regular Savings from Irregular Income: How Platforms Can Help

CGAP partnered with fintechs and platforms across Sub-Saharan Africa to understand how they are using digital rails to offer savings products to low-income gig workers. Here, we share what we found.
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Inclusive CBDCs: Inflated Expectations or A New Productivity?

Where will central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) land on the Gartner Hype Cycle? Are they full of inflated expectations, or a new tool for greater financial inclusion? We explore where CBDCs might provide at least incremental gains.
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Doing Good by Doing Well: Women Banking Agents in India

In India's Bihar state, women Bank Sakhi agents help enable financial inclusion for rural, vulnerable, and hard-to-reach customers, more so than the traditional agents - but various gender norms constrain how they operate. We discuss solutions.
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G2P Recipients Are Worth Competing For

Open G2P systems have great potential to connect recipients with a host of PSPs from which they can choose to receive their transfers. TymeBank realized the profitability potential of G2P customers and turned it into a core aspect of their strategy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.