Searching: Research & Analysis

Fintechs and Financial Inclusion

Based on pilots with 18 fintechs across Africa and South Asia, this paper identifies emerging fintech innovations with potential to improve the lives of the poor. It also highlights common challenges faced by early-stage fintechs.

Regulatory Framework for DFS in Côte d’Ivoire

This diagnostic provides an analysis of the regulatory framework for DFS in Côte d’Ivoire, including its coverage, conducive features, and gaps and obstacles. The paper also offers recommendations on how to address these issues.

Banking in the M-PESA Age

This Working Paper explores three approaches banks in Kenya have used to respond to mobile money. While nonbank mobile financial services can fundamentally reshape the financial sector in a developing market, as they have clearly done in Kenya, mobile services need not represent an existential threat to the traditional banking industry.

Financial Inclusion for the Rural Poor Using Agent Networks in Peru

This working paper explores how installing branchless banking agents and implementing financial trust workshops in Peru impacts JUNTOS users’ attitudes towards the formal financial system and, in turn, their savings behavior within it.

Supervision of Banks and Nonbanks Operating through Agents

This paper draws from research conducted in Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Uganda to look at how providers identify, classify, and manage risks related to the use of agents and how supervisors assess providers.

Going Mobile with Conditional Cash Transfers

In 2011, Banco Davivienda introduced DaviPlata, a mobile wallet, to the general public in Colombia. This paper describes Davivienda's challenges.

Driving Scale and Density of Agent Networks in Perú

Beyond banking, mobile networks also use agents to sell airtime and offer other payments services. In 2005 Perú enacted agent banking rules, and since then a number of players and models have emerged.

Incentives for the Introduction of Agents in Colombia

In August 2006, 309 out of 1,100 municipalities in Colombia did not have the presence of a bank. Today 99% of all municipalities have access to financial services thanks to increased coverage by agents. Incentives offered by Banca de las Oportunidades were essential in expanding this access.

Can Postal Networks Advance Financial Inclusion in the Arab World?

As existing and trusted institutions with large branch networks reaching rural areas, Arab postal networks have the potential to be powerful tools in the fight for greater financial inclusion in the Arab World.

Regulating Banking Agents

This Focus Note reviews global regulation of the use of agents by banks (and where noted, nonbank service providers) and focuses on four questions related to the safe and scalable use of agents.