Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: Carol Realini
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1460265521

As incredible as it may seem in this hyper-connected, technologically advanced era, half the planet's population exist as "Financial nomads"-those who nourish and shelter themselves without using traditional banking services. While the wealthy live at the top of a metaphorical pyramid, taking financial security and banking services for granted, there are billions of people who struggle at the pyramid's base in an exhausting state of financial exclusion and insecurity. Times are changing rapidly, but despite global uncertainty, technology has the capacity to reach and equip people in all walks of life. Advances in communications have reconfigured the ease with which we interact with our money-and these advances can provide innovative financial services to the unbanked and underserved around the world. Financial inclusion for all is indeed within our reach, and with this conviction, authors Karl Mehta and Carol Realini propose a vision for a better world and a blueprint to get there....

Banking the World

Banking the World
Author: Robert Cull
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262544016

Experts report on the latest research on extending access to financial services to the 2.5 billion adults around the world who lack it. About 2.5 billion adults, just over half the world's adult population, lack bank accounts. If we are to realize the goal of extending banking and other financial services to this vast “unbanked” population, we need to consider not only such product innovations as microfinance and mobile banking but also issues of data accuracy, impact assessment, risk mitigation, technology adaptation, financial literacy, and local context. In Banking the World, experts take up these topics, reporting on new research that will guide both policy makers and scholars in a broader push to extend financial markets. The contributors consider such topics as the complexity of surveying people about their use of financial services; evidence of the impact of financial services on income; the occasional negative effects of financial services on poor households, including disincentives to work and overindebtedness; and tools for improving access such as nontraditional credit scores, financial incentives for banking, and identification technologies that can dramatically reduce loan default rates.

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion
Author: Serena Natile
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-01-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429603770

Focusing on Kenya’s path-breaking mobile money project M-Pesa, this book examines and critiques the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial inclusion projects. One of the most-discussed digital financial inclusion projects, M-Pesa facilitates the transfer of money and access to formal financial services via the mobile phone infrastructure and has grown at a phenomenal rate since its launch in 2007 to reach about 80 per cent of the Kenyan population. Through a socio-legal enquiry drawing on feminist political economy, law and development scholarship and postcolonial feminist debate, this book unravels the narratives and institutional arrangements that frame M-Pesa’s success while interrogating the relationship between digital financial inclusion and gender equality in development discourse. Natile argues that M-Pesa is premised on and regulated according to a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring the expansion of the mobile money market in preference to contributing to substantive gender equality via a redistribution of the revenue and funding deriving from its development. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students in Global Political Economy, Socio-Legal Studies, Gender Studies, Law & Development, Finance and International Relations.

Financial Inclusion

Financial Inclusion
Author: Samuel Kirwan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-12-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781788211185

Limited access to financial services impedes economic development in impoverished communities, which has prompted policy makers, private institutions, and NGOs to develop strategies to address financial inclusion. Samuel Kirwan examines the various types of policy implementation and considers the efficacy of such economic interventions.

Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, Volume 1

Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, Volume 1
Author: David Lee Kuo Chuen
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2017-08-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0128104422

Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, Volume 1: Cryptocurrency, FinTech, InsurTech, and Regulation explores recent advances in digital banking and cryptocurrency, emphasizing mobile technology and evolving uses of cryptocurrencies as financial assets. Contributors go beyond summaries of standard models to describe new banking business models that will be sustainable and will likely dictate the future of finance. The volume not only emphasizes the financial opportunities made possible by digital banking, such as financial inclusion and impact investing, but it also looks at engineering theories and developments that encourage innovation. Its ability to illuminate present potential and future possibilities make it a unique contribution to the literature. - Explores recent advances in digital banking and cryptocurrency, emphasizing mobile technology and evolving uses of cryptocurrencies as financial assets - Explains the practical consequences of both technologies and economics to readers who want to learn about subjects related to their specialties - Encompasses alternative finance, financial inclusion, impact investing, decentralized consensus ledger and applied cryptography - Provides the only advanced methodical summary of these subjects available today

The Global Findex Database 2017

The Global Findex Database 2017
Author: Asli Demirguc-Kunt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781464812590

In 2011 the World Bank--with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation--launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account--the unbanked--as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures--along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials--are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

Money at the Margins

Money at the Margins
Author: Bill Maurer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2018-03-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785336541

Mobile money, e-commerce, cash cards, retail credit cards, and more—as new monetary technologies become increasingly available, the global South has cautiously embraced these mediums as a potential solution to the issue of financial inclusion. How, if at all, do new forms of dematerialized money impact people’s everyday financial lives? In what way do technologies interact with financial repertoires and other socio-cultural institutions? How do these technologies of financial inclusion shape the global politics and geographies of difference and inequality? These questions are at the heart of Money at the Margins, a groundbreaking exploration of the uses and socio-cultural impact of new forms of money and financial services.

Inclusive Growth

Inclusive Growth
Author: Howard Thomas
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2019-04-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1789737818

The book outlines a journey from enabling models of government and business to strategies for creating both financial and social inclusion and entrepreneurism as mechanisms for sustainable and inclusive growth.