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Weekly Roundup – 11/1/14: Apple Pay is here – should low-income consumers care?
As you may have heard, Apple recently launched a mobile payment app in the U.S. Within three days, it had become the top mobile wallet in the country - and sparked some surprising resistance. We discuss the implications for low-income consumers in the U.S. and emerging markets, along with some good news in global development, in this Roundup.
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- Impact Assessment, Technology
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Prepaid Protections: An interview with Cecilia Frew, Head of U.S. Prepaid at Visa
Prepaid debit cards are booming in the U.S., with consumers loading over $64 billion onto them in 2012. But due to regulatory uncertainty, there’s widespread confusion about their fees and terms. To address this, Visa is creating a special designation for cards that meet a set of consumer-friendly standards. We spoke with Cecilia Frew, Visa’s Head of U.S. Prepaid, about the product.
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- Finance
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Four ways to build an ecosystem to support business in low-income markets: How the Philippines is crafting a model worth replicating
The Philippines has proven itself an excellent example of a nation’s capacity to support ecosystem development, a model that could well be replicated in many countries. As UNDP looks to replicate the success of its country-level collaboration through the Business Call to Action Initiative in the Philippines, it is establishing a collaboration with the William Davidson Institute as part of the BoP Roadmap Initiative.
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- Uncategorized
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For Education Investment, ‘The Fix is in the Mix’: At SOCAP14, talks turned to long-term models
What would it take to attract more private capital toward funding for education? It was a key question at SOCAP14, and one that will require a lot more experimentation, writes Wedu’s Mario Ferror.
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- Education
- Tags
- impact investing
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Separating Potential from Panacea: USAID’s primer offers a disciplined approach to market shaping
While market shaping can be transformative, it’s not a cure-all. USAID’s primer offers a disciplined approach to examining a health product market and evaluating whether and how market shaping could increase access for end users.
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- Health Care
- Tags
- governance, supply chains
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Gates Foundation Alters Course in Pursuit of Breakthroughs: New Grand Challenges reflect that innovation and scale go hand in hand
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted its Grand Challenges Annual Meeting last week and announced three new challenges ... with a twist. Going forward, applicants will be required to partner with manufacturers, biomedical companies or others with expertise in product development before Gates will fund a project.
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- Health Care
- Tags
- impact investing, scale
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The Private Sector or Government : Who should solve Africa’s jobs crisis?
With unemployment at such a huge scale in Africa, it can feel like everyone’s (and no-one’s) problem to deal with. Ashoka’s Future Forward initiative recently kicked off a series of online conversations aiming to clarify who is responsible for youth employment in Africa. Here’s what three experts had to say.
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- Education
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Does Size Matter?: Study finds emerging companies are doing just as well as large, established counterparts when it comes to reaching BoP beneficiaries
The idea of smaller emerging companies matching initiatives from larger companies might seem counter-intuitive at first glance. But a study of dozens of inclusive businesses challenges the assumption that large companies are by definition the best route to scale at the BoP.
- Categories
- Education
