Competition & Interoperability in Digital Financial Services

Year Started:
2020

Key Partners/Clients:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Area of Work:
Digital Financial Services

Countries:
Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Jordan, China, India, Philippines, Thailand, Canada

What role can payments interoperability play in promoting the scale and uptake of digital financial services?

As digital financial services have expanded around the world, there are noticeable differences between countries in terms of the rate of expansion and the share of people reached – particularly low-income, poor, rural and women communities. The project aimed to develop a deeper understanding of the reasons for these differences between countries, particularly the role that might have been played by instant payments interoperability, in promoting scale and uptake of digital financial services.

On behalf of the Gates Foundation, BFA Global launched an effort to learn from past attempts at achieving interoperable instant digital payments, with a focus on both account-to-account and CICO interoperability.

The study aimed to answer the following questions:

It focused on Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, the EU, Canada, Jordan, China, India, the Philippines, and Thailand and also looked to other analogous industries such as PAYGo, card payments, and e-commerce to provide lessons.

The study also looked into how interoperability policy, then being formalized in adjacent spaces (e.g., Internet companies, social media), might have affected the future roll-out of payments interoperability, given current trends and technological advancements.

Download the full synthesis report