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‘Deep Pockets’ vs. ‘Long Pockets’ in DPI: What Instant Payments and Open Finance Tell Us About Sustainable Funding for Digital Public Infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is gaining traction in emerging markets around the world. But as David Porteous at Integral: Governance Solutions and Rafe Mazer at Fair Finance Consulting explain, while the financial cost of building DPI may be modest, operating it at scale requires ongoing costs to be allocated across the ecosystem over time, making DPI sustainability fundamentally a governance issue centered on pricing policies. They explore how two of the three broadly accepted categories of DPI, instant payment systems and open finance, can develop credible mechanisms to finance long-term costs — while maintaining incentives for participants and trust among users.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Moving Forward in a Post-USAID World: Why Women Must Be at the Center of Financial Inclusion
The demise of USAID has profound implications for the movement toward gender equality in financial inclusion and other development priorities. According to Julia Arnold and Sara Seavey, consultants specializing in women’s financial inclusion, the agency played a central role in funding, researching and coordinating global gender equality work — and without that anchor, these efforts are at risk of fragmentation and regression. They argue that this moment places responsibility on the sector itself to preserve the values, evidence and accountability structures that made progress toward gender-inclusive finance possible.
- Categories
- Finance
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Bfree Raises $3.1 Million to Tackle Africa’s Growing Digital Loan Crisis
Unlike traditional debt collection firms, Bfree uses artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to analyse borrower behaviour, estimate repayment capacity, and create personalised repayment arrangements.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Thunes and Vodacom Tanzania Launch Cross-Border M-Pesa Payments for Uganda and China
Thanks to the collaboration, Vodacom customers in Tanzania can now seamlessly pay merchants in Uganda and China directly from their mobile phones.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: Who Really Uses Her Mobile Money Account?
While men generally operated mobile money directly, the women they interviewed in rural Ghana were largely dependent on an intermediary to complete even the simplest transaction: a husband, a daughter, a neighbor or a local agent.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Latin America’s Digital Bank Plata Secures $405 Million in Series C Funding, Reaching $5B Valuation
Previously focused on credit cards, the platform has now introduced deposit accounts and debit cards, delivering comprehensive digital banking solutions to Mexican consumers for the first time.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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The Myths and Realities of Inclusive Insurance: Lessons from the Field
Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), insurance penetration is around 1% of GDP, compared to a global average of around 7%. According to Rehan Butt at Instaful Solutions, policymakers, donors and insurers have increasingly turned to “inclusive insurance” to reach LMIC customers — yet they often mistakenly approach it as a scaled down or charitable version of traditional insurance. He argues that inclusive insurance represents a fundamentally different business model, with distinct product design, processes, distribution and economics, and highlights some misconceptions that can cause these insurance products and programs to underperform.
- Categories
- Finance
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Designing Finance for the Realities of Youth: Applications are Open for the Newly Renamed Luxembourg Award for Inclusive Finance
Over 1.3 billion people in emerging economies are between 18 and 35, and the median age in some developing countries is in the teens or low twenties. As Sam Mendelson at e-MFP and Tim Nourse at Making Cents argue, young people represent the economic center of gravity in the Global South, yet financial systems were not designed to serve their shifting needs. They explore opportunities to unlock youth-inclusive finance — the theme of this year's Luxembourg Award for Inclusive Finance (formerly known as the European Microfinance Award).
- Categories
- Finance
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