Over the last 10 years mobile money has emerged as an important innovation with a potential to increase financial access in developing countries. Mobile money is making an important contribution to financial inclusion in many ways. First, it’s increasing access to financial services to a large...

Digital platforms, such as Alibaba and Amazon, operate an online marketplace to facilitate transactions. This paper studies a platform’s business model choice between accepting cash and issuing tokens, as well as the implications for welfare, resiliency, and interoperability. A cash platform...

We develop a micro-founded monetary model to inquire the role of a privately provided e-money instrument for household consumption smoothing and welfare. Different from fiat money, e-money users pay electronic transaction fees, but in turn e-money reduces spatial separation frictions and enables...