Rural

How digital payments bring new economic opportunities for women in rural India

LEARNING SERIES >> Collaboration to design and implement responsible G2P payments

Working with our members to help them collaborate with the private sector to build responsible digital payments ecosystems for the underserved and excluded.

India’s leading trade union of self-employed women makes bold commitment on responsible digital payments to benefit its 2.1 million women members

India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) joins the UN-based Better Than Cash Alliance

LEARNING SERIES >> Government ownership and leadership over digitization – critical to driving and scaling up digital payments

Planning: Vision and commitment to make digital payments a national priority

LEARNING SERIES >> How to unlock the big opportunity in small merchant payments digitization

Lessons from our work with members in Ghana, India, Mexico, and the Philippines

LEARNING SERIES >> Working together to prioritize merchant payment digitization and co-create solutions

Scaling digitization of payments for small and micro merchants by convening key stakeholders to co-create solutions.

This is the main barrier stopping female merchants from using digital payments

Catalyzing Responsible Digital Payments in the North East Region of India

Taking stock of the digital payments ecosystem with a 7-point action plan to expand the merchant acceptance network

Trust can conquer the final frontier in digitisation where women merchants can lead it

Responsible Digitization of Women Merchants in Rural India for COVID-19 Recovery

10 recommendations from civil society to unlock the impact of fintech in merchant digitization and further India’s progress on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

India Digital Payments Learning Exchange Series

Better Than Cash Alliance organized a peer exchange learning series to highlight the central and state government initiatives and facilitate peer learning to accelerate service delivery and digital financial inclusion.

FAO pledges to scale up direct use of digital financial transfers

Director-General says joining the Better Than Cash Alliance is part of stimulating more innovation and financial inclusion for smallholders

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The Impact of Mobile Money on Poverty Toolkit

Mobile money accounts have spread widely in select regions of the developing world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. This Research Brief focuses on the individual and household impacts of mobile money.

A Fine Balance: Regulation & Greater Economic Opportunity in the Case of Payment Gateways for Merchants

Opening new payment gateways for merchants presents risks but much greater opportunities. Striking the right balance between fostering innovative services and managing risk is crucial.

Voices to Choices : Bangladesh's Journey in Women's Economic Empowerment

This book analyzes advances in women’s economic engagement and empowerment in rural and urban Bangladesh.

The Impact of Mobile Money on Poor Rural Households : Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Does access to mobile money help improve livelihood in remote settings? This paper shows that rolling out mobile money agents in Northern Uganda led to cost-savings for remittance transactions. It also shows that access to digital payments doubled the nonfarm self-employment rate and reduced the fraction of households with very low food security. 

Picking the Gridlock: Digital Payments in the Transportation Sector

Transportation Series: Blog 1 (Introduction)

Saving by Default: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Rural India

Access to banks is rapidly increasing worldwide, and allows account-based instead of cash transfers. We conduct a randomized experiment documenting the impact of the payment method on saving…

Branchless banking: Evaluating the doorstep delivery of financial services in rural India

This paper evaluates the effect on household savings of India’s recent financial inclusion drive, a drive that generated an unprecedented increase in access to financial institutions by usin…

Ethiopia: “Mobile money doubled my number of customers in just three years”

In Addis Ababa, the vibrant Ethiopian capital, lies a busy Somali community market where Bisharo runs a small shop.