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Want to Boost Financial Inclusion? Pay Interest on Mobile Money
E-money has been the principal means of increasing access to financial inclusion. Yet most accounts in emerging markets are used only to receive government payments that are then quickly withdrawn as cash. Ross P. Buckley, Louise Malady and Cheng-Yun Tsang say that one way to tackle this problem, and to promote financial inclusion, is to pay interest on e-money.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Mars launches Farmer Income Lab to help eradicate smallholder poverty
The Farmer Income Lab will commission research and generate discussion to develop measurable frameworks and new business models to significantly reduce farmer poverty.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Nigeria: 10 Microfinance Banks Account for 40 Percent of Industry Loan
THE Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said the ten microfinance banks account for 40 percent of total loans in the subsector.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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Q&A: Batten professor helps launch World Refugee Fund
Mahoney, also the director of Social Entrepreneurship at the University and author of “Failure and Hope: Fighting for the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced,” co-founded the Alight Fund with her husband as a for-profit investment fund to support refugee and host community entrepreneurs.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- lending, microfinance, refugees
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Making Microcredit Charities Better
While supporting women entrepreneurs is commendable, no data suggest that lending to women—or men, for that matter—is a miracle poverty cure. That’s primarily because lenders commonly charge the poor about 25% for loans. Six randomized studies of microlending programs from 2003 to 2012, published in the American Economic Journal, found no correlation with improved welfare. Although the loans can be helpful in some situations, there’s no evidence of a transformational effect.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Inter-American Development Bank Grants Colombia $450 Million USD Loan for Financial System Reforms
According to the IDB, the proposed reforms will aim to solidify macroeconomic stability, boost development, encourage public/private partnership financing, strengthen regulation of the financial system, promote financial inclusion, and heighten the country’s ability to monitor progress in these areas.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Latin America
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Why Alternative Lending Struggles to Scale in Emerging Markets – And What Fintech Companies Can Do About It
Fintech models have proliferated in most developing countries, but alternative lending has struggled to gain scale. That's why FIBR, a project by consulting firm BFA in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, is bringing together fintechs and banks to use networks of small businesses – shops, clinics and even local schools – to deliver digital financial services to low-income customers.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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UN Study: Digitization of Kenyan Farmer Payments Helps Tackle Poverty
One Acre Fund, supported by Citi, enabled farmers to easily make loan repayments via mobile money instead of cash, reducing the uncertainty, inefficiency, insecurity and high costs previously caused by cash transactions.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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