Across the world mobile money schemes are being launched. In such schemes financial service providers interact with clients via mobile phones or other mobile devices such as tablets. Service offerings include payments and saving as well as basic insurance products and sometimes credit based on...

The authors explain the features of an array of futures contracts and their basic pricing relationships and describe a few applications to show how investors and risk managers can use these contracts. Futures - and derivatives generally - allow economic agents to fine-tune the structure of their...

About a dozen developing countries have deposit insurance systems and several others are considering establishing them. These systems are typically created to prevent contagious bank runs, to provide a formal national mechanism for handling failing banks, and to protect small depositors from...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are becoming more efficient. This brief sheds light on how the age of individual MFIs and the age of the industry affect efficiency improvements. On an MFI level the authors look into scale economies, cost structure, and process durations as potential efficiency...

About a dozen developing countries have deposit insurance systems and several others are considering establishing them. These systems are typically created to prevent contagious bank runs, to provide a formal national mechanism for handling failing banks, and to protect small depositors from...

This paper presents a new framework which allows people to manage their diverse payment, cashflow management and commitment savings needs simply and intuitively, from a single account. It builds on the logic of mobile money platforms, which provide customers with the ability to initiate...

This paper provides an overview of the potential for and constraints to using broadband channels and applications to increase financial inclusion globally and specifically in Latin America. We review ten different financial service opportunity areas, including savings services with enhanced...

This paper has three objectives. It lays out the key differences between a banking and a payments mindset, within the historical context in which these fields have developed. It initiates a discussion on whether it is useful to articulate the digital payments space as an emerging profession...

In inclusion circles, the issue of digital identity tends to be dominated by the perspectives of law enforcement (anti-money laundering and – terrorist financing), legal compliance (how long records need to be kept), and technological implementation choices (phones or cards, biometric or not)....

This report contains an initial evaluation of the opportunities for spreading financial services through business networks in local communities across sub-Saharan Africa. The central premise is that small, local business that are able to establish a data-rich, trusted relationship with financial...