Financial inclusion programs
For over 10 years, global institutions have initiated programs promoting financial inclusion to provide unbanked populations financial services allowing them to leave the informal sector. Observing both the successes of the telecom operators deployment and the mobile money services they offered, bankers realized that mobile and digital technologies would allow them to provide services to populations that were previously unreachable. Retail banks acquired the means to expand their client base and participate in the economic growth of their country, through a strong implication in financial inclusion.
The digital serving the unbanked cause
This is how visionary bankers became the first to launch digital financial services. They opened the way to digital banking. Société Générale, through YUP, Trust Merchant Bank through Pepele mobile, Banco Postale through Xikila Money, and many others, proved it was possible to capitalize on digital technologies to reinvent banking. However, financial inclusion remains a considerable challenge.
MFIs in the World Bank programs
The World Bank understood that if the unbanked did not leave the informal sector, emerging countries would not be able to grow economically. Thus, the World Bank decided to set up multiple initiatives. One of them is to bring a logistical, technological, and financial support to hundred of microfinance institutions lacking both the culture and the skills to enter this new world, but having significant knowledge on the targeted populations. Tagpay has been invited by the World Bank to participate in two workshops, one in Dakar with 11 African MFIs and one in Lima with 5 South American MFIS. In both regions, the goal was to understand how digital technology can help these financial institutions to develop their skills and their performance.
Tagpay has been developing technologies for 10 years, with only one purpose: bringing financial services closer to everyone’s lives. Thanks to the World Bank, we took a step further. Our collaboration allowed us to fully understand how MFIs could transform themselves to offer a complete range of financial services, and consequently how Tagpay can optimize its platform, making it fully compatible with any financial institutions’ stakes.