Searching: Research & Analysis

The Use of Agents by Digital Financial Services Providers

Agents play a crucial role in lowering the cost of delivery to reach the unbanked and underbanked population. An increasing number of countries, especially emerging markets and developing economies, allow a diverse array of banks and nonbank institutions to distribute digital financial services through agents. This Technical Note focuses on regulating agent models within an enabling framework that fosters financial inclusion.

Agent Networks at the Last Mile

Most digital financial services users require agents to help them switch between worlds of cash and digital currency. Global evidence suggests six principles for building viable agent networks in rural areas home to poor, financially excluded populations.

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.

Banking Agents in Colombia: Rural Expansion and Its Frontier

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.