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
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:
Why interoperability? Was interoperability necessary for full financial inclusion? The team evaluated outcomes from various journeys.
What policy design features were relevant for achieving interoperability success? Where success was registered, what interventions were deployed? (e.g., pricing caps, common standards, mandated participation)
When should policymakers have advocated for interoperability? What defined the right time – was it at the beginning, or should the market have been allowed to evolve over time before intervening?
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.