Blog

Emergency Relief for Small Businesses Requires a Targeted Approach

Here are some useful ways to segment the more than 160 million micro and small businesses in developing countries for more targeted, effective COVID-19 relief.

Financial Consumer Protection: 3 Steps to Better Customer Outcomes

Here are three steps that regulators can take to advance a customer outcomes-based approach to financial consumer protection.

Digital Banks Increasingly Embrace a Platform Business Model

There are a billion mobile money wallets in developing countries that could be made far more relevant for low-income customers by a digital marketplace approach to banking.

These Digital Banks Help Fintechs to Offer Banking Services

By enabling virtually any type of business to offer banking services cheaply and in record time, “banking-as-a-service” providers can dramatically reduce the barriers to entry into banking and potentially deepen financial inclusion.

Financial Services for Health: Treating the Cause

Health expenses push 100 million people into extreme poverty each year. While private sector innovation can play an interim role in financing out-of-pocket expenses, the long-term focus should be on making poor people resilient to health shocks.

The Wrong Kind of Credit: Why Loans to Gig Workers Must Reflect Income

Volatile gig income and inflexible loan repayment schedules can be a dangerous mix, as this ride-hailing driver in Nairobi learned from experience. His story serves as a cautionary tale to lenders and borrowers in the gig economy.

Survey Shows Gathering Clouds, but No Storm (Yet) for Microfinance

How is COVID-19 impacting the portfolios of microfinance institutions (MFIs)? Are MFIs facing a liquidity crisis? Is the solvency of institutions at risk? CGAP's global, monthly survey began two weeks ago, and answers are beginning to emerge.

Beyond Hackathons: Reaching Developers with Your Digital Finance APIs

Hackathons aren't the only way for a digital financial services provider to engage third parties with its open APIs.

How Is the Pandemic Affecting Agents? Here’s What Providers Tell Us

As customers, agents and digital financial services providers adjust to COVID-19, it’s becoming clearer what a resilient agent network looks like. Providers should take note to prepare for future crises.

Indonesia’s Retail Credit Crunch Requires Action to Keep Shelves Full

Indonesians could face empty shelves and a shrinking assortment of products due to credit crunches within consumer goods value chains brought on by COVID-19. Here are three things that can be done to keep the situation from snowballing.

Financial Services for Gig Workers: An Intersection of Needs in Kenya

Gig workers in Kenya cite savings, loans and medical insurance as top financial services they would like to access via gig platforms. While platforms across Africa increasingly offer credit and insurance, savings appears to be under-supplied.

The Box, Not the Tools: Managing Credit Risk in Asset Finance

Pay-as-you-go solar companies and other asset finance providers are using cutting-edge tools to manage credit risk, but many lack the risk culture, governance structures and processes to use them effectively.

Financial Services Build Resilience in Face of Crises Like COVID-19

In its efforts to develop a theory of change for how financial inclusion can improve poor people's well-being, CGAP has learned several lessons that shed light on what to prioritize during and after the COVID-19 crisis.

Ghana Launches World’s First Digital Finance Policy Amid COVID-19

While the new policy has been years in the making, the government hopes the policy will support its measures to leverage digital financial services in its COVID-19 response.

API Technology Jargon: What Business Leaders Need to Know

Here are three design principles that financial services providers should keep in mind when making technology decisions related to their open API products.

How Social Media Is Fueling Women’s Entrepreneurship in Myanmar

Many women in Myanmar and across Asia are using social media to conduct online commerce. Meet three entrepreneurs who are engaging in this type of informal e-commerce in Myanmar and have created jobs for other women.

Financial Inclusion and Resilience for FDPs in the Time of COVID-19

Learn about the recently launched "We Build Bridges: Roadmap to the Sustainable and Responsible Financial Inclusion of Forcibly Displaced Persons," in this guest post from BMZ and IRC.

Open Banking: 7 Ways Data-Sharing Can Advance Financial Inclusion

When banks and other financial institutions responsibly exchange customer data with other providers, the result is better products for low-income customers.

Asset Finance Innovations Can Advance SDGs – If They Scale Responsibly

New asset finance business models are breaking down old barriers to putting life-changing assets into the hands of poor households. But to meaningfully advance SDGs, they’ll need to scale responsibly, and this is where funders can play a role.

Kenya’s Expansion of G2P Becomes Lifeline During COVID-19 Crisis

Kenya offers higher fees to providers that facilitate digital government-to-person payments in underserved areas. Today, this makes it easier to reach hundreds of thousands of low-income people with assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.