Visa and the GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation Launch Digital Finance for All Initiative
26 February 2024 - 10:30PM
Business Wire
The five-year initiative aims to advance digital financial
inclusion for 20 million individuals and businesses in Africa, Asia
and Latin America
Today, Visa (NYSE: V), a leading global payments technology
company, and the GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation (GSMA
Foundation) announced the launch of the Digital Finance for All
(DFA) Initiative, furthering Visa’s decades-long efforts to
increase access to the global economy for everyone, everywhere.
This five-year initiative aims to advance digital financial
inclusion for 20 million individuals, including women, small holder
farmers (SHF), and nano, micro and small enterprise (NMSE) owners
across low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin
America.
While digital payments use by adults in low- and middle-income
countries is up 66% from 20141, women, SHFs, NMSE owners and
globally displaced individuals continue to face barriers accessing
the digital economy. Women in low- and middle-income countries are
20% less likely than men to hold a formal financial account2 and
more than 30% of the world’s food is produced by SHFs3 yet most
have limited or no access to formal financial services like credit,
loans, savings, or insurance4.
“At Visa, we believe that digital payments are critical to
including everyone in the digital economy by helping provide access
to economic livelihood,” said Chiagozie Nwabuebo, Vice President of
Global Growth & Social Impact, Visa. “Together with the GSMA
Foundation, we seek to empower those in underserved communities
across the world and provide equal access to help build better
financial futures for all.”
To help improve financial health, the DFA will:
- Deliver financial education resources through a jointly
developed mobile financial literacy toolkit that enables easy
delivery and scaling across markets to help enable successful
access to and participation in mobile money services;
- Develop joint research through the Visa Economic Empowerment
Institute (VEEI) and the GSMA Foundation focused on financial
inclusion, advocacy and product innovation for women, SHFs, NMSEs
and globally displaced individuals;
- Digitize SHFs and NMSEs to support their adoption of digital
financial services to enable their resilience and growth; and
- Support meaningful financial inclusion and wellbeing for
refugees and the communities who host them.
“Mobile money can play a transformative role in advancing
financial inclusion and resilience for the nearly 2 billion people
who remain unbanked globally. However, poor digital and financial
literacy is a key barrier to accessing digital financial services,
especially for certain population segments like women, farmers and
micro-merchants,” said Ashley Olson Onyango, Head of Financial
Inclusion and AgriTech, GSMA. “We are very excited about our
partnership with Visa enabling us to further drive economic
empowerment and support millions of users to access life changing
financial services.”
For more information on Visa’s commitment to build a more
inclusive global economy, visit here.
About Visa Inc.
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments,
facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial
institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries
and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the
most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network,
enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We
believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift
everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of
money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
About GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation
The GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation, Inc. (‘The GSMA
Foundation’) brings together mobile operators, innovators,
governments, and the international development community to realise
the positive social, economic and climate impact of mobile
technology, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. With
funding from donors and the GSMA, the GSMA Foundation runs
programmes that advance digital and financial inclusion – with a
strong focus on gender inclusivity, climate action, humanitarian
response, and investment in innovative digital solutions. Since
2007, these programmes have impacted the lives of over 220 million
people.
Find out more at
https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/who-we-are/gsma-foundation/
Follow Mobile for Development on X: @GSMAm4d and on LinkedIn:
GSMA – Mobile for Development Follow the Mobile Money programme on
X: @GSMAMobileMoney
1 The World Bank (2021), The Global Findex Database 2021 2 GSMA
(2023), Accelerating Digital and Financial Inclusion for Women. 3
Ricciardi et al (2018), How much of the world’s food do
smallholders produce? 4 CGAP (2019), Smallholder Households:
Distinct Segments, Different Needs
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240226678583/en/
Brittany Furia brittany.furia@visa.com 415-370-9693
Visa (NYSE:V)
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