The Better Than Cash Alliance is a partnership of governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to digital payments in order to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
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The World Economic Forum and International Trade Centre’s “Africa e-commerce agenda” discusses 8 policy areas - including enhancing digital payments - that can help unleash the potential of e-commerce in the continent.
This study discusses the emergence of bKash as the m-banking pioneer in Bangladesh. It focuses on the services provided by bKash and its current operating scenario in Bangladesh. bKash’s str…
New IMF paper outlines policy strategies to help promote financial inclusion through fintechs in the Pacific Island countries. It calls on governments to close regulatory gaps and enhance digital and financial literacy while urging fintechs to take a regional approach to overcome scalability constraints.
This FSD Kenya analysis demonstrates the utility of social media (Twitter) analytics tools for monitoring discussions around consumer protection.
This CG Dev paper, by Professor Njuguna Ndung’u, shows how M-Pesa’s success has led to a series of endogenous innovations that have shaped Kenya’s digital space. It outlines several important challenges that Kenya will need to address in order to further consolidate its success, including connectivity issues, digital ID, interoperability and consumer protection.
This Brookings policy paper, by Prof. Njuguna Ndung'u, argues that instead of increasing the tax base, taxation on mobile phone transactions may end up reversing the adoption of digital payments in Kenya. It says these lessons are also relevant for other African countries considering similar taxes.
Interview with Gustavo Vega, President of the clearing house ACH Colombia…
Entrevista a Gustavo Vega, Presidente de la empresa ACH Colombia…
This paper aims at investigating the driving factors for mobile money adoption in the WAEMU region. It identifies literacy rate, mobile infrastructure, and banking infrastructure (ATMs\100,000 people) as the main macroeconomic determinants for adoption.
This report by GSMA and UNHCR looks at the ways in which refugees are using mobile phones to help guide digital interventions by humanitarian organizations and mobile network operators.
At a panel discussion during the recently concluded GSMA M360 Africa, Flourish’s Ameya Upadhyay presented on how to harness the power of new technologies to drive access and transparency. Check out his presentation.
A new Karandaaz study shows that around 95% of merchants in Pakistan do not accept digital payments. To promote adoption, it calls for creating awareness among users, better infrastructure, interoperability and reliability of services.
This World Bank discussion paper argues that digital payments, along with other policies and tools, can help extend pension coverage to the informal sector in Africa. It also features case studies from 5 Alliance members namely Kenya, Rwanda, Benin, Ghana, and Uganda.
Prepared at the request of the G7 French Presidency, this Gates Foundation report aims to be “a blueprint for improving digital financial inclusion in Africa.”
Unregistered SMEs account for 65% of Nigeria’s GDP. Most of them often struggle to demonstrate their personal and business credentials to service providers and customers. This GSMA research finds that there is a need for new approaches to identity and mobile-delivered ‘economic ID’ solution holds promise.
This GSMA study shares lessons from Orange’s work in West and Central Africa on implementing Person-to-Government (P2G) payment strategies.
This CGDev study sets out to understand the effectiveness of reforms taken by Andhra Pradesh to digitalize service delivery. It identifies access, accountability, choice, and voice as the four principles underlying the digital reforms there.
Based on a survey of over 1,200 people in three districts of Rwanda, this Smart Campaign report delves into the experiences of users of digital financial services.
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.
As mobile-based digital agricultural solutions take hold in Kenya, there is a great opportunity to use data for improving financial inclusion of smallholder farmers.