With 1.3 billion living without electricity worldwide, the global need for off-grid energy solutions is massive. People living off-grid, spend an estimated $38 billion on kerosene for lighting and $10 billion on phone charging each year.

There is a growing realization in development circles that digital finance can and should better serve the needs of households for which agriculture is the only source of income. A strategic approach to mobile finance rollouts in rural areas should consider the agriculture sector as a gateway to rural customers. Agriculture involves cash transactional activity throughout the value chain amongst all the stakeholders. This high volume of transactional activity provides a value proposition that should be of interest to mobile network operators and/or financial institutions.

Once the foundations of a mobile money service have been established, service providers can significantly grow the volume of transactions by developing a mobile money ecosystem around their platform. Ecosystem transactions involve a third party and are: bill payments, bulk payments, merchant payments, international remittances, transfers between mobile money accounts and bank accounts as well as off-net P2P transfers to unregistered users.

According to Uttam Nayak, group country manager of Visa Inc for India and South Asia, mobile banking is the perfect platform for Bangladesh to take financial services to the country's largely unbanked population in an efficient and low-cost manner.   

A recent report by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) paints a worrisome picture of financial inclusion despite efforts by RBI in the last five years to offer at least limited financial services, especially in rural villages, and to coerce retail banks to comply with financial inclusion directives.

Was very interested in this latest press release...on the surface, all looks good.  unfortunately, as is often the case, this is not the only policy initiative being taken, and many of the others, focused on financial stability, consumer protection/privacy/etc, are not always pulling in this same direction...welcome further thoughts on what's coming out of Brussels from our readers!mattt

A study of thousands of family-owned firms in Italy reveals that, on average, replacing a male CEO with a woman improves a company’s profitability, an effect that becomes more pronounced as the proportion of women on the board of directors increases, says a team led by Mario Daniele Amore of Bocconi University in Milan. Overall, the more women on the board of a female-led firm, the more profitable it is likely to be. The presence of women directors may make female CEOs feel more comfortable, improving cooperation and facilitating information exchange, the researchers say.

Lack of access to financial services is a key barrier to the growth of micro, small, medium enterprises (MSMEs). IFC is working to develop solutions to close the MSME financing gap, collaborating with 314 financial institutions (FIs) across 90 countries globally. By partnering with many types of financial intermediaries, including microfinance institutions (MFIs), commercial banks, leasing companies, and private equity funds, IFC reaches many more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) than it could directly.

The IFC's approach to sustainability has gender embedded deeply within it.