Recent Blogs
Want Your Customers to Save More? Use Behavioral Economics
A behavioral economics experiment in Tanzania increased customers' savings by up to 11 percent using SMS messages about the balances of better savers.
Mapping Africa’s Latest Innovations in Digital Finance
CGAP received nearly 200 proposals from digital financial services providers across Africa interested in piloting new products. A look at those proposals — from 30 countries — shows that innovations are spreading beyond hot spots like Kenya.
Cultivating Opportunities for Women in Agriculture
National surveys in Mozambique and Tanzania show that women in agriculture do not diversify their incomes as much as men do. Equal access to financial services could help women to generate new sources of income.
Can Digital Savings Reduce Risks in Digital Credit?
An experiment in Tanzania suggests that offering savings and credit on the same mobile wallet can lead to more responsible borrowing.
Digital Financial Inclusion Supervision: Tanzania Pilot Program
The world of digital financial inclusion is growing quickly and outpacing capacity and resources to tackle it from a regulatory and supervisory standpoint. In response, CGAP and Toronto Centre piloted the first Digital Financial Inclusion Supervision training program in Tanzania.
Six Tips for Policy on Disruptive Digital Financial Inclusion
Digital technologies are changing the financial inclusion landscape worldwide by revolutionizing access to finance, connecting hundreds of millions to formal financial services for the first time. Financial market regulators, supervisors and overseers are racing to keep pace with these developments.
Paying for School: 6 Insights for Better Financial Services
The inability to pay fees and other education expenses keeps many children out of school. What is the extent of these challenges, who is affected and what kinds of financial services could help?
Interactive SMS Drives Digital Savings and Borrowing in Tanzania
Financial education is often delinked from customer actions–they may learn about interest rates now, but won’t need to borrow for months or even years. In rural Tanzania, an interactive SMS project brought information to farmers' phones, enabling customized learning in real time.
Interest Payments on Mobile Wallets: Bank of Tanzania’s Approach
One ongoing debate in digital financial services concerns whether customers should be able to earn interest on mobile money wallets. The Bank of Tanzania decided that the benefit of interest earned by MNOs should go directly to customers. Here are key lessons to date.
Leveraging Social Cues to Encourage Digital Payments
By focusing on social proof, Juntos and Tigo Pesa are building confidence in mobile money technology and driving the use of digital payments in Tanzania.
Tigo Nivushe, Tanzania: 5 Ways to Build Trust in Digital Lending
‘We will trust you until you give us a reason not to:’ Tigo launches an innovative mobile lending product in Tanzania.
Five Fresh Facts from the Smallholder Diaries
How are smallholder families managing their money? What challenges do they face? What financial solutions can help? CGAP’s Financial Diaries with Smallholder Households ("Smallholder Diaries”) spent a year with 270 farming families in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Pakistan to find out.
Digitizing Agricultural Value Chains: How Buyers Drive Uptake
Most companies don’t want to be the first in a sector to try something new and potentially unpopular. Dominant buyers must lead the way to drive large-scale mobile money uptake by smallholder farmers.
New Data Finds Mobile Money "On the Cusp" in Rwanda and Ghana
New data provides the most comprehensive picture yet of digital financial services (DFS) access and usage in Ghana and Rwanda.
M-Pawa 1 Year on: Mobile Banking Perceptions, Use in Tanzania
A year after the launch of M-Pawa, how are Tanzania's farmers using the savings and loan service? What improvements could lead to more uptake?
Making Tough Decisions as a Smallholder Farmer
Smallholders often have to make touch financial choices regarding what to prioritize with limited resources.
Four Ways Energy Access Can Propel Financial Inclusion
Now that mobile money platforms have become widespread, the private sector is using these services to power the delivery of additional services, such as pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar energy.
Financial Innovation and Solar Power: Conquering Energy Poverty
Early evidence suggests that more people can get electricity with the help of financial innovation. There are two key ways financial innovation is expanding access to electricity around the world.
Which Markets are Ready for Digital Finance Plus?
Innovative businesses are leveraging Digital Finance Plus to link poor communities with essential services. The success of these businesses is driven by multiple market factors. We explore which factors matter most based on a framework CGAP developed with McKinsey.