1. Cash: The artisanal movement may have reached its peak. Hipsters everywhere can now pay for their hand-sharpened pencils and small-batch mayonnaise with homemade, locally crafted currencies.
2. Household Finance: Despite recent economic growth and falling unemployment, many American workers are still struggling to save for emergencies or make ends meet. Financial capability programs, offered through employers, may help participants alleviate some of their financial struggles through knowledge and access to products and services.
3. G2P Infrastructure: The Indian Supreme Court ruled that biometric identification cannot be mandatory to receive government subsidies. Bad news for banks and financial inclusion advocates, good news for officials siphoning funds from "ghost" beneficiary accounts (see Muralidharan, Niehaus, and Sukhtankar's massive RCT).
Read More1. Financial Management: Communities in which social contracts are strong commonly use "social money" (non-cash modes of saving, storing, and transferring wealth) in daily transactions instead of cash. IMTFI
2. Consumer Protection: Isabelle Barrès, Director of the Smart Campaign, discusses the progress in developing and implementing consumer protection policies globally. NextBillion
3. Business Development: The world's most popular attempt at policy ranking might not actually tell us much about the reality. The Wall Street Journal
Read More1. Mobile Money: Vodafone and MTN announced plans to allow money transfers between East and Central African customers of either provider, marking a big step toward interoperability on the continent. The Wall Street Journal
2. Financial Management: FAI affiliate Ignacio Mas analyzes common behaviors and decision-making practices that underpin the financial management strategies of poor households. Upsides
3. Digital Payments: A new blog series explores mobile merchant payments in developing markets, with a focus on the factors it will take to build out the extensive networks necessary to provide value for both merchants and customers. CGAP
Read More1. Transfers and Subsidies: India's plan to provide subsidies electronically through bank accounts, biometric ID cards, mobile transfers (also know as JAM) can reduce leakage and increase efficiency but what are its limitations? Does it really have the potential to be "the holy grail of efficient and equitable welfare policy?" The New York Times
2. Evidence-Based Policy: The study of deworming pills that launched the RCT movement in development has come into question. But there are a lot of questionsabout the questions.
3. Credit: For rural farmers in India, increasing productivity often means purchasing expensive equipment with a loan, which may be difficult to obtain without collateral or a credit history. Could a financing model based on demand aggregation delivered through a local cooperative/bank partnership help? NextBillion
Read More1. Savings: A new report from the US Financial Diaries project provides evidence that lower income households are saving up for frequent, short-term emergencies that prevent the growth of long-term savings. Could 401k style auto-enrollment programs help to manage both long- and short-term savings goals? AARP
2. M-Pesa: Is M-Pesa merely a fintech service or [cue foreboding music] "a stealth political coup by a private operator which profits only from enforcing discipline, control and transparency (via massive data capture) over a wayward system?"... Financial Times
3. ...Regardless of its characterization, new regulations could cause Safaricom to separate its mobile money service from its voice, data, and infrastructure businesses. The changes could weaken Safaricom's market position, but may be a win for competitors like Airtel. Quartz
Read More1. Transfers: Cash transfers are a more common form of benefits for the world's poor than you might think. In fact, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where food and other in-kind transfers are more prevalent than cash transfer programs. The World Bank
2. Global Poverty: Between 2001 and 2011, the global middle-income population (those living on $10-$20 per day) almost doubled while those living on less than $2 per day halved from 29% to 15%. However, the poor just became slightly less poor as the portion of people living on $2-$10 increased 6 percentage points during this time while high income categories barely changed. Pew Research Center
3. Digital Literacy: A new report finds many women rely heavily on their social circles for instruction and trouble-shooting when it comes to accessing mobile internet, an important finding for mobile money and digital content providers. GSMA
Read More1. Mobile Money: What risks do customers perceive when using digital financial services and what are the consequences of those risks? A new brief explores these questions through the lens of lower-income customers in 16 markets around the world. CGAP
2. Financial Literacy: Most financial literacy programs are geared toward steady paycheck earners with long-term savings goals. But how can programs assist households that are struggling with volatile incomes and unpredictable expenses? Mediaplanet
3. Savings: A new survey raises the benchmark for emergency savings from 3 months to 6 months and unsurprisingly find few people meet the target. New research from the US Financial Diaries suggests that we're thinking about and measuring emergency savings the wrong way. Bankrate
Read More1. Alternative Credit Scoring: In a new working paper, researchers analyze consumer call data from a Caribbean mobile money provider and are able to predict the likelihood of loan default with accuracy similar to credit scoring models that rely on previous financial history. Brown University - Department of Economics
2. Consumer Lending: After 146 years of financing the 1%, Goldman Sachs announced it will venture into consumer (and potentially small business) lending. The New York Times
3. Mobile Money: The prevalence of over-the-counter (OTC) mobile money services in Pakistan means providers are no longer battling for market share among customers but for loyalty of agents. NextBillion
Read More1. Financial Inclusion: A comprehensive synthesis of various financial inclusion indicators reports large strides in achieving the goal of universal access by 2020. But what will be the next set of challenges to developing quality products for harder-to-reach populations? CFI
2. Debt: After filing for personal bankruptcy, San Francisco-based photographer Brittney Powell interviewed and photographed over fifty people for her ongoing series “The Debt Project,” which chronicles the struggles of ordinary Americans with large debt burdens. Slate
3. Poverty Alleviation: Due to the shifting and relative nature of poverty thresholds, does the quest to end extreme poverty still have meaning? Bloomberg
Read More1. Income Volatility: Insights into employment opportunities in the "sharing economy" (and research from US Financial Diaries) provide evidence that "life is no longer a matter of having or losing a job, but of stitching together a comfortable and secure quilt from a colourful range of fabrics." The Globe and Mail
2. US Poverty: Will a new "reality" show where families facing financial hardship play a version of the dictator game, judging how "worthy" another family is to receive a share of $101,000, undermine persistent myths and prejudices about low-income households, or is it just an incredibly crass, deplorable, and exploitative gimmick? The Nation
3. Financial Inclusion: IFMR research drives home the point that no matter what "inclusion initiatives" are launched, the behavior of agents will have a huge effect on whether accounts are opened and used in India. IFMR
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