Searching: Blogs

Understanding Côte d’Ivoire’s Financially Excluded Women

Women are 45 percent less likely than men in Côte d’Ivoire to have a mobile money account. Low mobile phone ownership and financial innumeracy remain major barriers.

Teller to Techie: Empowering All Employees to Act on Customer Insights

Sometimes the employees who don’t interact with customers have the greatest impact on the customer experience. Making it easier for all employees to act on customer insights can help companies grow while advancing financial inclusion.

MTN Uganda Opens Up Mobile Money APIs

Uganda's largest telco just opened APIs that enable local developers to build apps that leverage its popular mobile money platform. Here are some lessons learned from MTN Uganda's open APIs journey so far.

Digital Credit Helping to Put Kids in Classrooms in Cote d'Ivoire

By partnering with farmers’ cooperatives to offer an innovative digital credit product, Advans is seeing high repayment rates and having an impact on school attendance in rural Cote d'Ivoire.

How Regulators Can Foster More Responsible Digital Credit

Regulators can help ensure digital credit helps, rather than harms, poor customers by taking these steps.

Where Do We PAYGo from Here? PAYGo Beyond Solar

Pay-as-you-go financing is increasing poor people’s access to life-changing assets beyond home solar systems, from solar-powered water pumps to smartphones.

Super Platforms: Connecting Farmers to Markets in Africa

In Africa, super platforms aren't just connecting customers and merchants. They're also connecting farmers to markets.

Client Registration: The Blind Spot in Agricultural Insurance

This agricultural insurance provider tripled its product registration rates in rural Nigeria by improving its registration process.

Financial Innumeracy: A Global Problem for Digital Finance?

Mounting evidence suggests financial innumeracy presents a bigger barrier to financial inclusion than is often acknowledged. Here are three ways to improve numeracy.

It's Time to Slow Digital Credit's Growth in East Africa

New research from Kenya and Tanzania reveals that digital credit is often used for consumption purposes and that delinquency and default rates are high, suggesting funders of digital credit markets should prioritize consumer protection.

A Digital Platform to Manage Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenses

The M-TIBA mobile health wallet combines savings, remittances and other digital financial services to help low-income customers cover health care expenses.

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.

What Can Traditional Giving Teach Digital Fundraising Platforms?

What can today’s digital fundraising platforms learn from long-held traditions of giving? We spoke with givers in Kenya to find out.

Off-Grid Solar Company Helping Customers Pay School Fees

In Africa, some of the most innovative ideas in education financing are coming from an unlikely source - an off-grid solar company.

The Case for Off-Grid Solar Companies as Mobile Money Agents

Off-grid solar companies could boost revenue and reach more low-income customers by becoming master mobile money agents in remote areas.

Building Payment Rails in Frontier Areas Through Off-Grid Solar

Many off-grid solar companies are familiarizing customers with digital payments and helping them find mobile money agents. Should they go a step further and start managing agent networks?

Bringing Health Microinsurance to Kenyans via Mobile Phone

Bundling microinsurance with other mobile financial products is making health insurance more affordable and useful for low-income patients in Kenya.

Digital Payments That Resonate with Low-Income Farmers

A major Mozambican cotton producer found that local farmers thought bank accounts were only for wealthier people. It teamed up with an innovative bank to show that wasn’t true.

In Côte d'Ivoire, Financial Inclusion at a Crossroads

Mobile money is driving overall progress in financial inclusion in Côte d’Ivoire, but it’s also highlighting a digital divide that could leave excluded segments behind if not dealt with through smart policy.

Proximity Matters: Improving the Viability of Frontier Agents

Easy access to agents makes people more likely to use digital financial services, but business as usual has left remote communities underserved. Here are some ways governments and providers are expanding agent networks in hard-to-serve areas.