South africa

China cashing out as mobile payment soars (AFP)

Accelerating Financial Inclusion in South-East Asia with Digital Finance

Focussing on women, and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the paper highlights that digital financial solutions could play a significant part in closing gaps in financial inclusion and povides insights from Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

Alipay, WeChat Near $3 Trillion

UN Report: Social Network Payments Now Reach Nearly US$3 Trillion in China

Social Networks, e-Commerce Platforms, and the Growth of Digital Payment Ecosystems in China: What it Means for Other Countries

This report examines two of China’s most far-reaching applications – WeChat and Alipay – and explores their role in the development of one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated digital payments ecosystems.

UN report: Social network payments now reach nearly US $3 trillion in China

Payments on messaging and e-commerce platforms set to increase China’s GDP by $236 billion by 2025, unlocking new economic opportunities for people and small businesses…

Digitizing Wage Payments in Bangladesh’s Garment Production Sector

This report is the first of its kind to document key data points on the costs and benefits of wage digitization from a factory perspective.

Why Women Workers and Managers Prefer Electronic Wage Payments in Bangladesh

Payday can be an ordeal for women garment workers in Bangladesh. Often, they must wait in long lines, carry wads of cash through crowded streets, or encounter a mother-in-law demanding money…

India’s digital payments revolution

Joint post by Camilo Tellez-Merchan of Better than Cash Alliance and Vivek Belgavi of PwC India…

Beyond Cash: Incentivizing Merchant Acceptance in India

The report attempts to understand, for India, the factors that drive awareness and interest among current non-users of digital payments, analyze the experience of existing users and identify potential strategies to spur the adoption of digital payments among these consumers and merchants

Mobile Financial Services In Bangladesh

The report provides an overview of the MFS progress in Bangladesh and discusses how selection of staff and beneficiaries from USAID agriculture and health projects are using both traditional and mobile financial services.

Inclusive Growth Through Branchless Banking: A Review of Agent Banking and Its Impact

The paper explores the opportunities to overcome barriers to financial access in Bangladesh through branchless banking and emphasis that financial inclusion and inclusive growth could be advanced through existing work by Bangladesh bank on favorable agent banking policies

World Bank finds electronic payments a key driver of financial inclusion

This guide is the result of discussions and engagements with hundreds of stakeholders in over 25 countries to rethink and re-engineer the retail payments and includes specific insights from Mexico, Peru, and Australia.

Country Diagnostic: The Philippines

This Better Than Cash Alliance diagnostic estimates that Filipinos make about 2.5 billion payments per month, or roughly 64 monthly payments per adult, corresponding to a monthly value of over US$74 billion.

Leaving Money on the Table: Corporate and SME Experiences of Digitizing Business Payments in the Philippines

This case study builds the evidence base regarding business payments in the Philippines, the incentives businesses face, and what it would take to shift corporates decisively to digital payments.

Two challenges to help two billion reach financial security

Reposted from the original Gates Foundation blog on Impatient Optimists. Until recently, achieving financial inclusion for the world’s unbanked poor was a pressing goal with perplexing obsta…

Digitizing merchant payments in Bangladesh

Better placement of marketing materials can help boost usage of digital payments in small merchants. What are some other ways to drive usage? Read this IFC report that is based on feedback and learnings from early adopters of bKash in Bangladesh.

Leveraging Public-Private Partnership in the Philipines for Digital Financial Inclusion

His Excellency Jose L. Cuisia Jr., Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines to the United States of America, and Mr. Paolo Eugenio Baltao, President, G-Xchange (a subsidiary of Globe Te…

Debit cards provide flexbility to displaced families in Mali

August 2013 newsletter, Debit cards provide flexibility to displaced families in Mali, Giving Voice to Indonesian Cocoa Farmers on e-Services, Mobile Money Surveys