Searching: Research & Analysis

Understanding Consumer Risks in Digital Social Payments

Digital social payments (DSPs) are a fast-growing, yet often overlooked, digital financial services (DFS) segment. Acknowledging and addressing the most common and consequential consumer risks should be a priority for any program or provider seeking to unlock the potentials of DSPs for the poor.

Recourse in Digital Financial Services

Recourse systems can help consumers overcome the challenges related to product adoption and continued use by helping resolve initial problems or challenges quickly, which can build trust in providers and their products, and increase uptake and customer retention.

Mystery Shopping for Financial Services

This Technical Guide is designed to enable policy makers with jurisdiction over market conduct issues, consumer protection organizations, and development agencies to conduct mystery shopping exercises.

Juntos Finanzas: A Case Study

This case study describes the Juntos platform, which aims to address the engagement gap between customers and providers. It describes how it works, what it can and cannot do, early results, and issues arising from initial implementations.

Inclusive Finance and Shadow Banking

This Brief explains why approaches to inclusive finance that are currently widespread do not share the potentially destabilizing attributes of other types of shadow banking, concluding by identifying some risks worth monitoring as the picture continues to evolve.

Doing Digital Finance Right

This Focus Note explores consumer risk in digital finance—-particularly through the lens of lower-income and less-experienced consumers.

Emerging Risks to Consumer Protection: Key Findings in Colombia

This research sought to understand the perspectives of providers and regulators on consumer protection in digital finance in Colombia.

Informed Consent: How Do We Make It Work for Mobile Credit Scoring

This report explores what consumers understand about their mobile data, and how it is being used by financial service providers and what methods for informed consent might help ensure that individual borrowers understand how their information is used.

Applying Behavioral Insights in Consumer Protection Policy

This Focus Note presents emerging evidence on behavioral biases relevant to financial consumer protection, their consequences, and how market conduct regulation and other measures might best reduce abuse and produce better services for consumers.

Embedding Social Performance Management in Financial Service Delivery

This Brief highlights the case for social performance management and illustrates how financial services providers can embed responsible finance practices into service delivery and contribute to healthy market development.