Art Appraisal Blog

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.

Advances in payment infrastructure are enabling governments to channel payments through multiple providers, giving people greater choice over how to receive payments. This is an important shift with implications for financial services providers, recipients of government payments and financial inclusion.

Digital payments are central to the global COVID-19 response, but the agent networks that distribute these funds are struggling to remain open. Here are three questions policy makers must answer to ensure agents reach as many people as possible.

As COVID-19 accelerates the shift to digital finance, we need to make sure women are not excluded.

The consumer consent model for data privacy and protection is broken. It’s time for a new data paradigm whereby financial services providers and data collectors take greater responsibility for protecting customers’ data.

Most digital financial services users require agents to help them switch between worlds of cash and digital currency. Global evidence suggests six principles for building viable agent networks in rural areas home to poor, financially excluded populations.

The story of National Payments Corporation of India sheds light on the quick and robust transformation of India’s payment systems. The lessons learned from the NPCI success story can be useful for policy makers in financial inclusion and other markets.

Consent forms are the backbone of data protection efforts worldwide, but there’s a problem: no one reads them. To protect people’s data, policy makers must go beyond consent.