Payments are the connective tissue that drives economies. Based on a growing body of evidence, they are a gateway to the financial services that buffer people from risk and allow them to take advantage of economic opportunities. While we see an increasing endorsement of interoperability as an essential market condition for financial inclusion, the high cost of investing in shared and open infrastructure to achieve true interoperability at scale has slowed the development of payment models that offer inclusive digital financial services for all.
Access to safe, affordable, digital financial services could bring more of the 1.7 billion unbanked adults into the formal financial system, especially in developing economies (World Bank, 2018). In fact, digital financial services, if widely adopted, could add $3.7 trillion to emerging countries’ GDP by 2025. That amounts to a 6 percent increase above business as usual. In low-income countries with very low financial inclusion rates, such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and India, GDP could increase by as much as 12 percent (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016).
Consistent advocacy and Mojaloop’s free, open source software, offer a path forward to support new scalable payments solutions to help countries achieve the scale needed to meet financial inclusion goals.