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Women and Money: Bridging the Financial Inclusion Gender Gap in the Global South
The urban poor in the Global South lack access to banking and financial services, and women are disproportionately affected. They are less likely than men to hold a bank account, to take out a loan, or to borrow money. This is a detriment to development since women are more likely to spend extra funds on their family, thereby improving food, education, and health. São Paulo, Mexico City, Nairobi, Bangalore, and Dhaka have taken various approaches to bridging the financial inclusion gender gap.
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Fighting Financial Exclusion: How To Serve 88 Million Americans Who Have No Bank
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor,” the great American author James Baldwin wrote in 1960.More than half a century later, his words ring true to the 46 million Americans who live below the poverty line and to the millions more who are struggling to stay above it.
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Safaricom softens stance on opening up M-Pesa
Kenya’s largest mobile phone company Safaricom has softened its position on opening up its mobile money system M-Pesa to rivals.
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- Impact Assessment
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Wireless Currency, Endless Possibility: Seven promising mobile money projects to emerge from BRAC’s challenge
BRAC’s Social Innovation Lab launched the Innovation fund for mobile money in March to explore new possibilities and create the necessary space for innovations using mobile money within BRAC in Bangladesh. The challenge drew an enthusiastic response from people, receiving 100 wide-ranging ideas in just five weeks. Following a rigorous selection process, seven ideas that showed the most potential were chosen for implementation.
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- Technology
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Ten Days in Kenya With No Cash, Only a Phone
Even farther into the country, a few miles from the Ugandan border in a town called Bungoma, I find Gertrude Wamalwa working her farm plot, a rust-colored scarf tied across her forehead and a machete in her leathered hands. Wamalwa and her Bungoma neighbors don’t appear to have any connection to mobile money.
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Impact Investing: Not Just For Billionaires
Foundations just make grants, correct? Not necessarily. Grants are becoming one option in a more complex menu of financial tools for the social sector.
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Tigo, Airtel, Zantel announce Africa’s first interoperable mobile money agreement
Three major telecoms companies operating in Tanzania – Tigo, Airtel and Zantel – are to adopt interoperable mobile money services by the end of the month, the first agreement of its kind of Africa.
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How Mobile Phone Carriers Are Helping Insure The 4 Billion People Who Live Without A Safety Net
With this system, every time a customer tops up his SIM card, he gets free insurance coverage. The model helps carriers increase brand loyalty and gets people in poverty comfortable with the emerging concept of micro-insurance.
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