1. MicroDigitalFinance: A few weeks ago I wrote that small-dollar short-term loans have always been the bane of the banking industry. We're getting a new test of that. US Bank is launching an alternative to payday loans: loans are between $100 and $1000 and repaid over three months. Interest rates are well below payday lending rates, but still around 70% APR--interestingly on US Bank's page about the loan they very clearly say: "Simple Loan is a a high-cost loan and other options may be available." All of that is good news. But the loans are only available to people with a credit rating (even if it's bad), who have had bank accounts with US Bank for 6 months and direct deposit for 3 months. It will be fascinating to watch take-up, repayment rates, and outcomes--those are where banks have always struggled in this market. Here's Pew's Nick Bourke's take on the US Bank move and the potential for others, with some more regulatory action, to follow suit.
I occasionally remark on insurance being the most amazing invention of all time. It's astounding that it works at all, even in the most developed, trusting and well-regulated markets (see this attempt by one of the US's oldest life insurance providers to collapse the market); it's not surprising that it's a struggle to make it work elsewhere, in the places where households face more risk and would most benefit from access to insurance. So I'm always interested in new work on insurance innovation. Here's a new paper on a lab-in-the-field insurance experiment in Burkina Faso. The basic insight is that many potential purchasers struggle with the certain cost of an insurance premium versus the uncertain payoff. It turns out that framing the premium around an uncertain rebate if there is no payout--which makes both premium and benefit uncertain--increases take-up, especially among those that value certainty most. Yes, you probably need to read that sentence again (and then click on the link to see that even that obtuse sentence is marginally clearer than the abstract). If we want to delve into the details of insurance contract construction, there's also a new paper that delves into how liquidity constraints--a huge factor that hasn't generally gotten enough attention--affect the perceived value of insurance contracts, and how to adjust the contracts accordingly.
And finally, William Faulkner's dictum that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." applies to fintech. A new paper finds that common law countries in sub-Saharan Africa have greater penetration of Internet, telecom and electricity infrastructure, and thus much greater adoption of mobile money and FinTech. That's consistent with history of banking literature that finds common law countries do better on financial system development, financial inclusion and SME lending.
For the record, I've clarified in my own mind the difference between the MicroDigitalFinance and Household Finance categories. The former provides perspective on providers, the latter on consumers. I reserve the right to break that typology as necessary or when it suits me.

2. Household Finance: I suppose another way to distinguish between the two categories is that MicroDigitalFinance features bad news only most of the time, while Household Finance is just all bad news. At least that's the way it feels when I come across depressing studies like this: Extending the term of auto loans (e.g. from 60 months to 72 months as has become increasingly common during this low-quality credit boom) leads to consumers taking loans at a) higher interest rates, and b) paying more for the vehicle. Liquidity constraints mean consumers pay much more attention to the monthly payment and get screwed.