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A Better Way to Get Paid? : Defining quality for ‘payroll cards’
For low-income employees who lack access to bank accounts, payday often comes in the form of cash or a paper check. But cash can easily be lost or stolen, and checks often require a costly or time-consuming visit to a check casher. Reloadable, prepaid "payroll cards" are a much better alternative, says Thea Garon at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, in describing CFSI’s new Compass Guide to Payroll Cards.
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- digital payments
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The Overlooked Secret to Successful Small Businesses: The ‘demand side of financing’
The inability to access capital is a frequent obstacle for would-be entrepreneurs in the developing world. But most of the energy spent on solving this problem is currently focused on the financial industry, or the supply side. Instead, we should focus more attention on the demand side of funding – working with entrepreneurs, argues Juan Carlos Thomas of TechnoServe.
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Promising Practices: CHMI highlights 71 pro-poor innovations improving health care around the world
The Center for Health Market Innovations has released its annual report, "Highlights: Findings From 2014," which identifies health care programs and policies, documents and analyzes promising practices, and spotlights programs with potential for scale up and adaptation within and across borders.
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- Health Care
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Finding Realistic Impact Measures for Investors, Entrepreneurs: Presenting Unitus Seed Fund’s new guide for measuring impact
Unitus Seed Fund’s guide includes a common set of metrics that can be applied to any other venture fund. These metrics are detailed with definitions and needs that apply across sectors, with output and outcome level metrics available for different types of businesses to download and use.
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- Impact Assessment
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Corporations are the Missing Link: Private sector is uniquely positioned to improve newborn survival in India
India accounts for 27 percent of global newborn deaths, the highest in the world. Dasra, a Mumbai-based strategic philanthropy foundation, has been conducting research which highlights a critical “missing link” that can help India address newborn survival at scale: corporates.
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- Education, Health Care
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How to Get 30 Fintech CEOs to Open Up About Financial Inclusion: Lessons from Accion’s inaugural CEO Forum
Who exactly are financial inclusion entrepreneurs, and what do they do on a day-to-day basis? The leaders at Accion’s recent CEO Forum represented diverse enterprises ranging in size from three employees to 200. Through discussions around regulation, talent, growth, financing and more, the event showed a lot about what drives – and what worries – these entrepreneurs and their businesses.
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Peaks Unclimbed: Former Malawi President Joyce Banda discusses how the Millennium Development Goals have failed to deliver for girls and women
According the United Nations’ official MDG Progress Chart, two of the goals lagging furthest behind are MDG 3 – which aims to promote gender equality and empower women – and MDG 5 – which aims to improve maternal health. "How can we tell (the women of the world) that their health and equality simply wasn’t a priority?” asks former Malawi President Joyce Banda in this rare interview.
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- Education, Health Care
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Making Change on a Mobile Handset: Four IPA studies explore how to make digital financial services more effective and affordable
There are 203 million registered mobile money accounts worldwide and 256 mobile money services in operation. But only 30 percent of registered accounts are used regularly. More rigorous research is needed to maximize the sector’s impact on the poor. To this end, Innovations for Poverty Action is implementing several studies on digital financial services, four of which are discussed in this post.
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- Education
