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...

M-PESA, a mobile-phone based electronic payments system, has been adopted by 8.5 million Kenyans in the relatively short span of 2½ years. Surveys of users show it is a highly valued service, and Safaricom continues to expand the range of applications it can be used for. This paper explores how...

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...

We present a model of human decision-making that can be used to design future financial services. The purpose of our model is to collate a wide variety of observed financial practices of the privileged and the poor into a common framework that can be applied in different contexts. Think of it as...

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...

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...

This note reviews the Spanish experience with regulating the competition aspects of new mobile payment networks in the absence of formal technical standards. The saga is in two parts, as the strategy of the early movers, dominant telco Telefonica and leading bank BBVA, changed radically in...

This paper presents ten key service design features that have facilitated the rapid adoption and active use of M-PESA in Kenya. These relate to branding and messaging, ease of use, consistency of customer experience, agent monitoring, instantaneous customer registration, free deposits, ability...