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India’s Self-Help Groups Need Help: How to Strengthen a Proven Model to Support Women’s Recovery From the COVID-19 Crisis
Women’s empowerment is a growing focus in the development sector, but COVID-19 is putting the hard-won progress women have made in recent years at risk. Moin Qazi highlights one way to support women in emerging countries: the self-help group model. He discusses how these groups operate in India, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they could be leveraged to address the current crisis.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Education, Finance, Impact Assessment
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Analysis: Could Digital Currencies Make Being Poor Less Costly?
Blockchain-based payment systems can bring the more than 1.7 billion people who are unbanked or underbanked (including 25% of U.S. households), into the formal economy. And in doing so, they can render obsolete the expensive, usurious payment and informal financial services those people use to make ends meet.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Kenya’s Mobile Money Use Surges on COVID-19 Prevention Measure
The use of mobile money in Kenya has surged to a new high boosted by one of the measures declared by the government in the war against COVID-19.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Sector in Ruins or ‘Building Back Better’? Findings From e-MFP’s Covid-19 Financial Inclusion Compass
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the global recession it has triggered, the financial inclusion sector is facing perhaps the greatest crisis in its modern history. In response, the European Microfinance Platform repurposed this year's Financial Inclusion Compass survey for this critical moment. Sam Mendelson discusses the results, and what they say about the sector's priorities, challenges and prospects for recovery.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance, Investing
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Liberia: MTN Liberia Launches International Remittances Direct to Mobile Money Accounts
Lonestar Cell MTN, one of Liberia's leading GSM and Mobile Financial Services companies, announces that, as of August 3, 2020, Mobile Money customers can receive money from their family and friends anywhere in the world directly to the MoMo accounts, free of charge with the launch of International Remittances.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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COVID Coin?
The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the long-term shift away from cash, and monetary authorities risk falling behind. A recent report from the G30 argues that if central banks want to shape the outcome, they need to start thinking fast.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance, Technology
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Digital Identity and Financial Inclusion: How Digitizing Customer Due Diligence Can Strengthen Providers During COVID-19 and Beyond
Customer due diligence requirements are a major barrier to financial inclusion, since in some countries up to half the adult population can't open a bank account because they lack the necessary identity documents. With COVID-19 placing this obstacle in the spotlight, analysts at Cenfri explore how digital ID systems can benefit providers and customers, during the pandemic and beyond.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance, Technology
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How Fintech Platform CNote Gives Socially Conscious Investors New Ways to Battle Inequality: An Interview With Catherine Berman
Catherine Berman is CEO and cofounder of CNote, an innovative fintech platform that unlocks new investment opportunities for retail and institutional investors. Working with mission-aligned community lenders, CNote aims to close the wealth gap by allowing anyone to invest in small businesses, affordable housing and economic development in financially underserved communities, with a focus on lending to women and minorities.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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