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Digital Government: 4 Keys to Kenya’s Success with Electronic Government Payments
Kenya has long been grappling with inefficiencies in government service delivery, characterized by resource constraints, bureaucratic processes and lack of accountability. In response, the government launched an integrated service model for person-to-government and business-to-government payments, allowing digital payments via online and mobile tools. Here are four reasons Kenya is ideally suited to digitize its government functions.
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Airtime to the Rescue: Why India Should Mobilize Telcos for Disaster Relief
Last April, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, telcos offered free mobile airtime for 48 hours to their customers based in India, so they could connect with their family members and friends in Nepal. This example illustrates the potential of utilizing the payments infrastructure to respond to natural disasters. I believe this potential could be more fully realized by channeling relief and rehabilitation funds to disaster victims using airtime as currency – and India is the ideal proving ground for the concept.
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Pro-Women, Anti-Cash: How Cashless Economies Can Boost Women’s Empowerment
We are still a long way from a world where cash is obsolete – in fact, 85 percent of consumer transactions are still conducted in cash, and for many people, hard currency clearly remains a useful commodity. But the landscape is changing rapidly, and for the world’s poorest and most excluded communities – and for women in particular – the drive towards cashless economies offers an exciting window of opportunity.
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Financial Products are Available – Why Aren’t the Poor Using Them?: IPA is seeking research partners to help answer that question
Take-up of mobile financial products remains low, and usage rates are often disappointing. That's why Innovations for Poverty Action is facilitating research to test solutions to this problem. We're republishing this post, which originally ran last July, since IPA is re-opening its fund for research proposals. The new deadline for Expressions of Interest applications is April 29, 2016.
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- Education
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Weekly Roundup: A New Africa Accelerator – What Moms, Kids and GE Get Out of It
This week, GE and Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship announced the healthymagination Mother & Child Initiative, which intends to help social enterprises refine their business plans, manage their human capital and prepare for growth. We discuss this program, the value of old-school development solutions, and (potentially) big news from Facebook in this roundup.
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- Investing, Technology
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Kiva Cofounder Raises $9.2 Million For A ‘Branchless Bank’ For The Developing World
For his new concept of a “branchless bank,” Flannery’s going the startup route with some of Silicon Valley’s best known investors.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- mobile finance
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India’s banks take the battle to mobile wallet players
Banks are taking the battle to mobile wallet companies, armed with their readymade payment systems, wide merchant network and an on tap customer base, attempting to reclaim a turf which just a couple of years ago was their fiefdom.
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- Region
- South Asia
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NexThought Monday: Sprinters vs. Limpers – Three Critical Success Factors for Digital Finance Deployments
According to the GSMA, there are 271 mobile money services in operation across 93 countries, and digital financial services are now available in over 60 percent of developing markets. An increasing number of services are reaching scale, as 30 services now have more than one million active accounts. But 241 have failed to do so. So what separates these 30 “sprinters” from those deployments that are merely limping along?
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