Cost savings

London Borough of Lewisham: Care leavers receive allowance via prepaid card

The London Borough of Lewisham is an inner-city district serving over 248,000 people.

When young people who have been placed in the Borough’s care leave it at the age of 18, they receiv…

Electronic G2P Payments: Evidence from Four Lower-Income Countries

This CGAP Focus Note presents the evidence gained from a comprehensive study of the experiences in developing and implementing e-payment schemes linked to financial inclusion in four lower-i…

Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India

NBER Working Paper No. 19999
Issued in March 2014

Summary:

We evaluate the impact of biometrically-authenticated payments infrastructure (“Smartcards”) on beneficiaries of employm…

Plugging into Mobile Money Platforms: Early Experiences of NGOs in the Field

This focus note reviews early lessons for NGOs from the field. It explores three central questions: Does initial evidence support the notion that mobile money is a cheaper, faster, and more …

Bansefi Visa Debit and Prepaid Cards Create “Oportunidades” for Mexico ’s Financially Underserved

The largest social program in Mexico, Oportunidades, distributes benefits to 6.5 million people. The government-owned Bank of National Savings and Financial Services (Bansefi) was looking fo…

Zap It to Me: The Short-Term Impacts of a Mobile Cash Transfer Program

Conditional and unconditional cash transfers have been effective in improving development outcomes in a variety of contexts, yet the costs of these programs to program recipients and impleme…

Visa Streamlines Distribution of Child Support Payments in Nebraska

Distributing benefits, such as child support, unemployment and disability assistance, has been transformed by the use of prepaid cards. Instead of mailing paper checks, 40 states now use Vis…