The paper reviews the relevance of formal financial services - and in particular savings - to poor people, the economic factors that have hindered the mass-scale delivery of such services in developing countries, and the technology-based opportunities that exist today to make massive gains in...

M-PESA is a remarkably successful mobile payments system launched in Kenya three years ago. Users are able to send money to each other conveniently from their M-PESA using only their mobile phones. A key to the success of M-PESA is the availability of an extensive network of retail shops that...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This paper describes the opportunity of using mobile phones as a way to increase access to finance in developing counties. It also explains how mobile payments can trigger innovation and entrepreneurship at the base of the pyramid, and how they can serve to bring liquidity to rural communities