Fintech for the Water Sector

This paper explores how fintech can support expansion of market-based solutions for water, sanitation, and irrigation, identifying several use cases where fintech is already being used to address financial inclusion and access to water.

Responsible Finance Forum Website

Since 2009, the Responsible Finance Forum (RFF) has been an annual milestone that brings together the private sector, governments, practitioners, policymakers, academia, and consumers to share emerging best practices, solutions and initiatives to scale up financial inclusion globally.

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…

Beneficiary Perceptions and Attitudes in Fiji: Facilitating Migration from Paper-based to Electronic Benefit Distribution

This study exams the real and perceived constraints social welfare beneficiaries and low income households face in using formal banking services. The study was done to inform the government…

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…

Kenya Case Studies in e-Payments

This document describes four case studies on the use of mobile money in Kenya, covering use by a government ministry (The Ministry of Lands), an NGO implementing partner of USAID (PACT), a g…

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…

Banking with mobile phones in Haiti: A report on a T-cash pilot program

This report describes the experience of Catholic Relief Services Haiti in employing a new mobile phone–based banking service, T-Cash. This service was adopted on a pilot basis to improve CRS…

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 …

The Solidaridad Visa Prepaid Card Brings Relief to Dominican Citizens in Need

Millions of people in the Dominican Republic struggle with poverty and hunger. In the past, distributing food, fuel and medicine was slow, expensive and often didn’t reach the intended recip…

New Technologies in Cash Transfer Programming and Humanitarian Assistance

The research examines the constraints to the uptake of these technologies in humanitarian programming, and has identified barriers to wider adoption of new technology that can be broadly gr…

Visa Delivers the Benefits of Electronic Payments to the Trucking Industry in Brazil

In Brazil, the trucking industry has relied on a paper-based “freight letter” system for paying truck drivers’ salaries. Aside from operational inefficiencies, this method subjected cargo co…

Aadhaar: Digital Inclusion and Public Services in India

Aadhaar, India’s program to provide a unique identity number for every resident, is the largest biometric identification program in the world. Launched in 2008, the program has created biome…

Payment Cards and Economic Growth: The Positive Economic Impact of Digital Currency

Moody’s Economy.com recently completed a study to measure the economic impact of the shift from cash and checks to digital currency in 51 economies worldwide….

Incentives for the Introduction of Agents by Banca de las Oportunidades in Colombia

The Impact of Electronic Payments on Economic Growth (2013)

A study by Moody’s Analytics that looked at the impact of increased card penetration on the private consumption of 56 countries over five years.

M-Shwari: Market Reactions and Potential Improvements

This Microsave report examines initial market perceptions to M-Shwari, a mobile banking service that allows M-PESA customers to borrow money and apply for emergency loans directly through th…

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…

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…

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…