Art Appraisal Blog

Category - Digital Payment Ecosystems

08/15/2022
Digital Payment Ecosystems

Africa’s Journey Towards an Integrated Digital Payments Landscape and How the EU Can Support It

This policy brief outlines why cross-border interoperability of payment platforms across Africa is important, where the opportunities and challenges lie, and how international partners such as the EU can support African efforts. It traces some of the solutions that are being applied both at the continental and at the regional levels, explores some of the lessons to be learned from these different cases, and proposes initial policy recommendations for the...

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07/19/2022
Digital Payment Ecosystems

A Digital Stack for Transforming Service Delivery: ID, Payments, and Data Sharing

Digital technologies are changing how the world interacts and transacts. From opening bank accounts to parents enrolling their children in school and social safety net programs verifying a new beneficiary, to businesses applying for licenses, day-to-day activities are becoming increasingly automated and integrated. Apart from reducing costs and spurring innovation, this creates opportunities to make better services available to more people, such as by removing the need to physically go...

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06/22/2022
Country Studies

Can Digital G2P Transfers Drive Financial Inclusion and Digital Payments? Evidence from India

Does channeling government-to-person (G2P) payments through bank accounts encourage financial inclusion and use? This paper explores the factors that have driven the adoption of digital payments in India by beneficiaries of PMGKY, the large-scale COVID-19 relief program launched in May 2020. India’s 2013 move to pay social benefits through direct transfers into bank accounts significantly increased account ownership, but uptake of digital payments has been slower, although it has accelerated...

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04/29/2022
Country Studies

Beyond India’s Lockdown: PMGKY Benefits During the COVID-19 Crisis and the State of Digital Payments

India imposed a lock-down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and began a gradual re-opening in June. A telephonic survey in April examined the early effectiveness of information and the massive PMGKY social protection program (Policy Paper 217). This paper analyzes a second-round survey, conducted six months later. Logistical and information constraints had relaxed, and incomes and jobs had begun to stabilize for some. There were not...

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04/29/2022
Digital Payment Ecosystems

National Digital Payments Roadmap – Bangladesh 2022-2025

Investment in the digital infrastructure of the country has been a priority for the Government of Bangladesh in the past decade, ever since the vision for Digital Bangladesh was launched. Digital payments are critical to the government’s vision and ensuring these are scaled responsibly is now critical. The National Digital Payments Roadmap (‘the Roadmap’) provides a high-level plan to expand the adoption of responsible digital payments in a way that...

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04/29/2022
Country Studies

Digitalization: A Safe Path to a More Inclusive Recovery in Indonesia?

There are two key longstanding structural constraints to inclusive growth in Indonesia—low financial inclusion and limited access to finance—resulting in a large financing gap. Indonesia’s digitalization— growing rapidly in the e-commerce and financial services sector, the latter facilitated by fintech—is helping close this gap. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely serve to further accelerate this digital transformation: adoption of e-commerce and digital payments has increased amidst lockdowns and social distancing. Digitalization...

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03/29/2022
Digital Payment Ecosystems

South Asia’s Digital Opportunity: Accelerating Growth, Transforming Lives

The report presents both the opportunities of and the bottlenecks for furthering the digitization of South Asia’s economies. It emphasizes the importance of integrating digital ID, payments, and data sharing systems into “digital stacks,” as well as fostering digital businesses and skills. Within this broader framework, the report discusses the experiences of regional governments with digital g2p payments.

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02/14/2022
Digital Payment Ecosystems

Identification for Development (ID4D) and Digitalizing G2P Payments (G2Px) 2021 Annual Report

This annual report summarizes the work produced by the World Bank’s Identification for Development and G2Px initiatives in 2021. It highlights individual country experiences such as in Togo and Lesotho, as well as their insights regarding gender.  

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01/21/2022
Beneficiary Identification, Targeting, Onboarding

Digitalization of Social Protection Systems Policy in Indonesia as a Step Towards Society 5.0

This paper discusses efforts to digitize Indonesia’s social protection systems in the context of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative. It summarizes the trajectory of database development and use in Indonesia, as well as the country’s 2017 mandate that all government benefits be distributed in a cashless manner.

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01/10/2022
Country Studies

Digital Cash Transfers in LAO PDR

The use of cash as a modality for delivering humanitarian and social protection assistance in Lao PDR is nascent. Up until recently, cash in hand has been the only feasible way to deliver transfers to targeted recipients. This scoping exercise highlights how mobile money could redress some of the drawbacks linked to cash in hand for both cash actors and beneficiaries. These include: access constraints, lack of traceability, and the...

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