Art Appraisal Blog

India imposed a lock-down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and began a gradual re-opening in June. A telephonic survey in April examined the early effectiveness of information and the massive PMGKY social protection program (Policy Paper 217). This paper analyzes a second-round survey, conducted six months later. Logistical and information constraints had relaxed, and incomes and jobs had begun to stabilize for some. There were not...

Investment in the digital infrastructure of the country has been a priority for the Government of Bangladesh in the past decade, ever since the vision for Digital Bangladesh was launched. Digital payments are critical to the government’s vision and ensuring these are scaled responsibly is now critical. The National Digital Payments Roadmap (‘the Roadmap’) provides a high-level plan to expand the adoption of responsible digital payments in a way that...

There are two key longstanding structural constraints to inclusive growth in Indonesia—low financial inclusion and limited access to finance—resulting in a large financing gap. Indonesia’s digitalization— growing rapidly in the e-commerce and financial services sector, the latter facilitated by fintech—is helping close this gap. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely serve to further accelerate this digital transformation: adoption of e-commerce and digital payments has increased amidst lockdowns and social distancing. Digitalization...

About 17 percent of the world’s population has received at least one COVID-19-related cash transfer payment since the onset of the pandemic. Many of these transfers have been conducted digitally to efficiently and safely provide economic relief to affected households. Amongst low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that offered cash transfers, 58 disbursed funds directly to a fully functioning bank account, an account only for benefit withdrawal, or a digital non-bank...

This blog post from IPA summarizes the findings from a survey of SAP 2 transfer beneficiaries in the Philippines. Due to a number of issues under SAP 1, including overcrowding, SAP 2 benefits were distributed digitally through accounts rather than in cash. The survey found that the average recipient was satisfied, despite waiting for about an hour and being charged roughly $1 to cash out. Only 16%, however, were aware...

The report presents both the opportunities of and the bottlenecks for furthering the digitization of South Asia’s economies. It emphasizes the importance of integrating digital ID, payments, and data sharing systems into “digital stacks,” as well as fostering digital businesses and skills. Within this broader framework, the report discusses the experiences of regional governments with digital g2p payments.

The Philippines’ experience in implementing the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) in response to the COVID -19 pandemic highlights the pressing need for financial inclusion, especially among the poor. Not only ownership of bank or mobile money accounts but also accessibility to financial services is essential for financial inclusion. This study assesses the challenges and opportunities in financial inclusion, especially among the poor in remote communities. It finds, among other things,...

This brief guidance note primarily focuses on social assistance G2P payments and includes some selected tips for policymakers and practitioners to consider when designing and implementing digital social assistance programs that aim to increase financial inclusion and economic empowerment among marginalized groups. The tips are derived from previous work done by ideas42 and its partners on using insights from behavioral science to increase financial inclusion and optimize social assistance programs.

This paper reviews South Africa’s social protection policies and their implementation during the COVID-19 crisis. Overall, the government reached over 30 million South Africans with cash-based relief measures. A distinctive feature of cash-based emergency relief was the use of digital technologies, especially in the application and verification process for the new SRD grant. The payment system, however, relied heavily on manual cash disbursements, thus failing to reflect the adoption of...

This paper produced by SPACE examines the social protection response to COVID-19 in the Pacific region, where such systems are emergent. It assesses how individual countries responded to the pandemic, and draws operational lessons. The Authors pay particular attention to Fiji’s experience, where the use of mobile money was prominent.