Page 12 - World Trade Center Delaware

FINTECH:
The view from the World Bank
BY CARLA STONE
People in the U.S. are often surprised to find that some of the world’s fastest growing economies are located on the African continent, and southern and southeast Asia. Countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Tanzania,
and Thailand attribute this growth to improvement of access to financial services. And as economies develop, so do the demands for goods and services, many of which could be supplied by Delaware companies.
Responding to questions from World Trade Center Delaware, the World Bank Group’s Finance Practice Manager, Mahesh Uttamchandani, said that, “Access to affordable financial services is critical for poverty reduction and economic growth, which is directly relevant to our twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Financial services allow the poor to seize opportunities through investments
in their health, education, and businesses. They also build resilience against financial emergencies — such as a job loss or crop failure — that often keep people trapped in poverty.”
Access to financial services has been especially successful in Kenya where the telecommunications sector has led the development of the use of mobile technology to transfer
money. It has the largest and most successful mobile money sector on the continent. In 2007, the company MNO-Safaricom introduced the M-Pesa. Since then, it has become the preferred method of transferring money, bringing formal financial inclusion to 80% of the population. By December 2019,
MAHESH UTTAMCHANDANI there were 58.3 million mobile wallets, representing 1.7 mobile wallets for every adult. Compare this to the U.S. where the research firm Insider Intelligence estimates that 64 million, or 30%
of the population, are mobile wallet users.
However, people around the world, and often in the very countries where the most progress has been made, still do not have full access to financial services.
“Despite encouraging progress on financial inclusion – account ownership in developing countries reached 63% in 2017, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex – many of the world’s poor continue to lack access to financial
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12 | WORLD TRADE CENTER 2020 | WTCDE.COM