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Digital Remittances: Now that they’re here, where are they headed?
Economic migrants send US $600 billion back to their home countries each year, most using expensive "traditional" agent networks, despite the availability of cheaper digital channels. But Xavier Martin Palomas with the Digital Frontiers Institute notes that in the past five years, we've seen a new wave of players and a renewed push toward digitizing remittances. Next month the Digital Frontiers Institute will launch its first course, Remittances in the Digital Age, to study the rapidly changing industry.
- Categories
- Finance
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Pairing access to finance and energy to solve global poverty
Pairing access to finance with access to energy can help more than a billion people raise their standard of living, banish poverty to the past and no longer be counted among the unbanked.
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Advances and lessons learned from BIM, Peru’s first mobile money wallet
BIM recently announced its plans to launch new services in the second half of 2017. It will enable customers to pay electricity, water and telephone bills, as well as have access to micro savings, loans, and microinsurance.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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What’s the future of mobile payments in Nigeria?
In March 2018, the Central Bank of Nigeria shared its vision to achieve at least 80% financial inclusion by 2020.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Afghanistan enlists faith-based banks to aid financial inclusion
World Bank data shows that only 15 percent of adults in Afghanistan have a bank account, while 16 percent cite religious reasons for not having one.
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Viewpoint: Postal Service banking system possible in U.S. – if past pitfalls avoided
As of 2015, about 7 percent of U.S. households were “unbanked,” meaning that no one in the household had a checking or savings account. An additional 20 percent of households were “underbanked,” meaning that they relied, at least in part, on payday lenders, check cashing services, pawn shop loans, or other non-traditional sources for financial services.
- Region
- North America
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Better Data for Better Products: New Online Resource Aims to Close the $200 Billion Smallholder Finance Gap
The US $200 billion gap in farmer finance is a tremendous opportunity – but it's one that financial service providers are missing, due to the lack of transparent and reliable data. That's why One Acre Fund and MIX, with support from the Mastercard Foundation's RAF Learning Lab, launched the Smallholder Finance Product Explorer. A May 8 webinar will show industry actors how to use some of these new online tools to reach the 450 million smallholders in need of financing.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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Using big data to link poor farmers to finance
The global growth of microfinance banks has created new opportunities for financial inclusion, with outstanding lending of $100 billion to around 200 million clients. Yet the majority of lending from microfinance institutions has been to urban populations and not to the rural poor or small farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
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