Art Appraisal Blog

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 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 report seeks to answer the question: Can G2P payments provide an on-ramp to financial inclusion? It does so by focusing on the confluence of three different movements to improve the economic well-being of low-income individuals and households in developing countries: financial inclusion; digital financial services; and government-to-person payments (G2P payments). Its findings suggest that currently there is little indication that G2P payments do result in increased financial inclusion through...

Digital finance has expanded opportunities for millions of women across the globe, yet there remains much work to do to achieve gender equality in financial services. This report discusses policies for achieving equal financial inclusion, including the role of digital G2P.

This working paper seeks to provide an overview of dominant perspectives, policies and operational and regulatory approaches that are shaping existing initiatives to digitise social protection programmes across the Global South. It focuses on Government–to–person (G2P) transfers and reviews both grey and academic literature and addresses two specific questions: To what extent do the transformations brought about by the digitisation of G2P programmes contribute to facilitating poor and vulnerable people’s...

This Better Than Cash Alliance report details principles for building responsible digital payment systems. An update to BTCA’s 2016 publication, the report emphasizes the importance of consumer trust driven by reliability, interoperability between services, and conscious efforts to include marginalized communities, particularly women.

The most valuable innovation is in G2P delivery systems that empower women to choose how to receive their cash.