Comment by Riaz Haq on December 24, 2015 at 9:46pm

Pakistan ranked 5th in financial inclusion by the Economist magazine's Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU):

Peru (90 points) and Colombia (86) remained the top two countries for financial inclusion. The Philippines was followed by India (71) and Pakistan (64), while Chile and Tanzania (62) tied at sixth and Bolivia and Mexico (60) tied at eighth. Ghana (58) rose in the ranks to clinch the 10th place.

Finishing at the bottom of the rankings were Haiti, Congo, and Madagascar.

“One of the key takeaways from the 2015 Microscope is that there is very little policy slippage around financial inclusion; new policies are being adopted and existing ones further implemented,” the report said, though citing concern on “limited” progress among nations with average gains of only two points for the year.

As for the Philippines, the country has yet to make more progress on providing credit access on a sizeable chunk of unbanked residents, alongside putting forward technology-assisted schemes for the financial system.

“While the Philippines has been a leader in promoting and creating an enabling environment for financial inclusion, there is still much to be done, as only 26% of adult Filipinos have savings accounts and only 10.5% have access to formal credit,” the study read.

“Challenges remain in terms of scaling market innovations, particularly in technology-driven initiatives. There is also a chronic need for financial education and consumer-protection initiatives across regulated and non-regulated institutions.”

http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Economy&title=p...

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 18, 2016 at 4:47pm

#Pakistan’s rising #mobile wallet adoption. #financialinclusion #mobilemoney http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2016/09/18/business/pakistans-risin... … via @epakistantoday

Mobile wallets (Such as Telenor EasyPaisa, Mobilink Jazz Cash etc) are often heralded as an innovative source of financial inclusion for the unbanked. And rightly so, mobile wallet accounts bypass the necessity of building and staffing a bank branch, and it also relieves its account holder from making the effort of going to a bank branch. Similarly, at least for Pakistan, its registration requirements makes it an easier option than a regular bank account.

Pakistan’s Financial Inclusion strategy for2015 recognises the importance of mobile money in expanding “digital transactional accounts”, which the strategy recognises as a key driver. In this regard, the recent upsurge in the number of mobile wallet registration should be encouraging. Just to put it in perspective; as perdata from the State Bank of Pakistan, at the end of Jul-Sept 2012, the number of wallet accounts was at approximately 1.8 million, however by Jul-Sept 2015 the same has risen to 13 million.

It is definitely a heartening increase especially when seen from a financial inclusion angle. But it is important to consider the demographics of these new wallet owners, are they predominantly from the banked segment or the unbanked one? A relevant source for answering these questions is the Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) survey 2015 for Pakistan. The FII 2015 is a nationally representative survey with a sample of 6000 individuals. Besides covering other aspects of Pakistan financial inclusion landscape, the FII also provides interesting insights into the probable demographic composition of Pakistan’s wallet accounts.

To begin with, the FII 2015 predicts that most wallet owners already had bank accounts, more specifically only44% of mobile wallet owners did not have bank accounts. When seen as a proportion of their base samples, wallet owners with bank accounts constituted 8% of bank account holders, however, unbanked[1] wallet owners were only 0.61% of the unbanked sample.

So who are these unbanked wallet owners? And how are they different from the unbanked who did not opt for a wallet account?In the following paragraphs will go over a few significant differences between unbanked mobile wallet owners, and the unbanked who do not have a wallet account.

Awareness about mobile money seems to be low among this group as 45% of unbanked with no wallet accounts were simply unaware about any of mobile money brands out there. It won’t be wrong to assume that almost half of the unbanked with no wallet account don’t even know about the existence of a mobile money option.

Gender differences were also apparent, as FII 2015 predicts 77% of unbanked wallet owners to be male, and only 22% to be female. This might be because of cultural constraints in Pakistan that discourage

Mobile wallets (Such as Telenor EasyPaisa, Mobilink Jazz Cash etc) are often heralded as an innovative source of financial inclusion for the unbanked. And rightly so, mobile wallet accounts bypass the necessity of building and staffing a bank branch, and it also relieves its account holder from making the effort of going to a bank branch. Similarly, at least for Pakistan, its registration requirements makes it an easier option than a regular bank account.

Pakistan’s Financial Inclusion strategy for2015 recognizes the importance of mobile money in expanding “digital transactional accounts”, which the strategy recognizes as a key driver. In this regard, the recent upsurge in the number of mobile wallet registration should be encouraging. Just to put it in perspective; as perdata from the State Bank of Pakistan,at the end of Jul-Sept 2012, the number of wallet accounts was at approximately 1.8 million, however by Jul-Sept 2015 the same has risen to 13 million.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 28, 2017 at 6:51pm

#ITU to open first ever #fintech center in #Pakistan in collaboration with #American researchers at U of #Washington

https://www.techjuice.pk/itu-to-open-first-ever-fintech-center-in-p...

Information Technology University (ITU) and Digital Financial Services Research Group (DFSRG) University of Washington (Seattle, USA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a pioneering FinTech center in Pakistan.

The agreement was signed by Dr. Umar Saif, Vice Chancellor Information Technology University (ITU) along with Dr. Richard Anderson, Head DFSRG and Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. The aim of the research center is to take Pakistan forward in financial technology space by adopting digital financial services countrywide.

Under the agreement, a collaborative research will be conducted in areas of cybersecurity, authentication, fraud prevention, financial education, financial management, data analytics, and customer experience studies in digital financial services. The FinTech center will also promote the digitization of Government-to-Person (G2P) and Person-to-Government (P2G) payments in Pakistan.

Dr. Richard Anderson said that it was the first ever collaboration in the World with Pakistan, which will be extended to the Africans and other Asian countries. Dr. Umar Saif stated that it would facilitate the smartphone transactions and establish transparency in the system.

DFSRG is a research group at Washington University supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It aims to improve the abilities of banks and mobile operators by deploying Digital Financial Service (DFS) products and providing technological solutions.

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