About a year back in August 2018, MSC collaborated with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship to start the journey of Financial Inclusion Lab. The Lab currently receives support from the J.P. Morgan, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and the Omidyar Network. The Lab supports start-ups that develop innovative, technology-enabled solutions in the areas of financial technology, livelihoods, and skilling for the benefit of low- and middle-income (LMI) communities. MSC provided technical assistance (TA) to these start-ups. This blog focuses on the lessons learned from this TA program where we highlight six key insights that could be helpful both to investors, consultants, and other organizations which plan TA programs for similar start-ups.

Bootcamps designed by the JPMC FI Lab allow start-ups to introspect and reflect on their “growth and accelerate” needs. This blog brings out the lessons and experiences from these bootcamps.

This blog highlights the journey of Kaarva, a fintech start-up that provides salaried people from the low-and middle-income segments with early access to a portion of their earned salaries for the month without charging any fees.

This is the third blog of the “Digitizing merchant payments in India” series. In the first blog, we discussed the potential of merchant ecosystem in India and the need to design distinct solutions for them. In the second blog, we described the characteristics of the first two merchant personas—the go-getters and the receptive reticents. In this third blog, we discuss the remaining two personas of the merchant ecosystem: a) The high-hanging fruits and b) The easy-catch merchants.

This is the second blog in the series on “Digitizing merchant payments in India”. The first blog discusses the potential of merchant ecosystem in India and the need to design distinct solutions for different merchants. In this blog, we will discuss two merchant personas: a) The go-getters and b) The receptive reticents.

This series of blogs highlight that providers cannot promote merchant payments through standard “cookie-cutter” solutions. What works for one category of merchants may not work for the other category. We need to look at merchants as distinct personas to decipher their characteristics and explore ways to change their behavior.

This report aims to catalyse the financial inclusion of financially underserved Bangladeshi women through improved MFS adoption.

MicroSave has been working with NPCI and leading public sector banks to create a less-cash ecosystem in select villages across the country. This note captures the concluding part of the journey.