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Happy World Savings Day: Here are 10 microsavings lessons to help you celebrate today’s other holiday
As you probably know, October 31st is Halloween. But you might not know that it’s also World Savings Day - and this year, the event coincides with the end of a 4-year microsavings project at Grameen Foundation. The project has helped create 850,000 new active savings accounts throughout India, the Philippines and Ethiopia. Grameen Foundation’s Kimberly Davies shares the biggest learnings to come out of the project.
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The Digital Payments Future: Transforming the way the world addresses poverty
The expansion of digital payments could be poised to increase financial inclusion and change the way the world addresses poverty, says Ruth Goodwin-Groen, managing director of the Better Than Cash Alliance. In this post, she discusses the multiple benefits that can be gained as cash is replaced with digital payments.
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What Exactly Does ‘Better Banked’ Mean?: PopTech event explores fundamental questions around financial inclusion
What would happen if behavioral economists, implementing partners and policymakers got together to think about financial security - along with ethnographers, product designers and entrepreneurs? A recent PopTech salon offered the opportunity, raising fundamental questions of consumer behavior and what financial security means in today’s world.
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Tapping the Network to Fight Poverty: How targeting influential leaders can increase financial innovation uptake
Whether you measure it by Twitter followers or by how crowded your kitchen is at dinnertime, it’s clear that some people have larger social networks than others. And a few individuals invariably emerge as central points of contact for their larger social groups. Jake Kendall of Gates Foundation discusses innovative research suggesting that these network “hubs” can propel the diffusion of financial innovations at the BoP.
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- Education
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NextThought Monday: Why I’m optimistic about small-dollar credit in the U.S.
The dangers of payday loans and similar products are well-known: they are extremely expensive, often with triple-digit interest rates, and structured in a way that easily traps borrowers in a cycle of debt. Yet CFSI’s Beth Brockland sees cause for optimism in the small-dollar credit marketplace in the U.S. - and this optimism could extend to other developing markets.
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- Finance, Technology
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Microinsurance in Africa grows by 200%, says report
More than 44 million Africans use microinsurance products as tools to manage the risks they are exposed to, a study on the Landscape of Microinsurance in Africa last year has shown.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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In Indonesia, Mobile banking becomes a source of local banks’ revenue
With the sharp increase in the use of smartphones, mobile banking has become an important source of income for Indonesian banks that are now expanding fee-based services to boost their profits.
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- Asia Pacific
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Full Financial Inclusion Possible by 2020
The Center for Financial Inclusion "Mapping the Invisible Market" project revealed that the majority of the financially excluded live in just six countries: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
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