Art Appraisal Blog

Given pre-existing gender gaps, there are concerns about exclusion for many of the social assistance programs being rolled out around the world in response to COVID-19. Social protection systems that ignore gender inequality will likely fail to mitigate the risks of the pandemic for women, and, at worst, could further exacerbate inequalities. Therefore, inclusive economic policies that empower women and create resilience now and for the future must be designed to ensure women contribute to the global recovery. This paper offers guidance and considerations for policymakers to support women’s inclusion and empowerment.

This Briefing provides guidance to policymakers to work with financial sector regulators and implement COVID-19 social assistance payments that facilitate rapid, remote account opening in compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) rules.

This paper summarizes the range of practice across jurisdictions that have employed a combination of SDD (also known as tiered CDD), licensing of non-bank financial institutions, and digital identification to enroll unbanked individuals into financial accounts so that they could receive COVID-19-related relief cash transfers.

Financial institutions and governments have been working for years to leverage digitized G2P for women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment. COVID-19 has increased the stakes, as governments look to use G2P programs to strengthen women’s resilience. New research from Women’s World Banking offers insights on Indonesia’s PKH program, the country’s largest conditional cash transfer.

The financial impact of COVID-19 has been hitting the poor. Governments are adjusting cash transfer programs and utilizing national payment systems to mitigate these negative impacts. This blog reviews responses from Latin America, Asia and Sub Saharan Africa where governments with limited resources are coming up with innovative solutions to the crisis.

Social cash transfers to vulnerable households and individuals have been adopted at an unprecedented scale across sub-Saharan Africa. While most programs initially relied on manual cash disbursements, digital payment technologies have been on the rise since the early 2000s. Through a survey of 130 programs in 44 countries this paper offers a comprehensive overview of payment instruments and providers used in the region. Although cash continues to play a key role in the disbursement of social transfers, the adoption of electronic payments through private companies is increasing and further payment reforms and digitization efforts can be expected.

There’s a better way to deliver government-to-person (G2P) payments. Modernizing the delivery architecture can increase value for customers, increase customer choice, lower government costs and create competition among financial service providers.

By 2015, several social safety net programs out of the more than 100 in Bangladesh were experimenting with digital payments, often through a single vendor. But there were more benefits to be gained if programs used a unified government payments platform to consolidate and simplify delivery. CGAP worked with other development partners on a proposal. This is the case study.

This case study documents what drove the Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services to develop an innovative, choice-based digital payments system and how this new multi-provider payments model has worked in practice.

This case study examines how the Inua Jamii program, a program of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, gradually introduced payments digitization, then choice to design a program that has successfully scaled to reach the most vulnerable groups in Kenya.