This blog is the second in a three-part blog series. The blog highlights use cases where digitizing even a conservative 10% of the current cash-based transactions presents service providers with a supplemental opportunity worth more than INR 45 billion (~USD 608 million).

India’s digital payments landscape has transformed dramatically over the past five years. This report, published in collaboration with the National Payments Corporation of India, provides a detailed outlook on India’s journey of digital payments, factors affecting the adoption of digital payments among the LMI segment, and products that have revolutionized the space.

Digital payments in India have grown phenomenally in the past decade. This report highlights how digital payments in the country grew and charts the path ahead. We look at the journey of digital payments in India, major events and entities that contributed to it, and products that revolutionized the digital payments space. We also identify barriers to the digital payments sector and analyze the future of digital financial inclusion through payments for the low- and moderate-income segments in India.

This blog captures personas of three postal workers and their journey from being mail deliverers to financial inclusion enablers. While desirers consider IPPB Business correspondent service as a great learning opportunity and a source of income, Aspirers drive self-actualization from their work as a financial inclusion enabler. The blog covers lessons for postal banks across the globe who wish to leverage their vast postal network to bridge the financial inclusion gap and improve financial equity.

Bhupen, a young chef from Tripura, India, uses mobile apps for remittances, as well as merchant and bill payments. He has grown fond of digital payments after his coworkers in New Delhi introduced him to payment apps. However, he discovered a different situation when he returned home to Tripura during the second wave of COVID-19. He tried to introduce his elderly father to the mobile-based payments ecosystem after seeing him risk infection to make monthly recurring deposit (RD) payments in the post-office. Bhupen and others highlight the digital revolution brewing in rural Indian households. This blog examines how we can replicate this approach beyond India to extend digital financial services to the elderly and make them digitally self-reliant.

In this blog, we chart Mool’s journey. Mool is a neo bank that enables Indians in the low- and middle-income (LMI) segment to take small steps toward saving and investing. Read on to see how Mool uses an interactive, easy-to-use platform to make customers save more and plan their financial lives better. Mool is a startup under the Financial Inclusion (FI) Lab accelerator program’s fifth cohort. The FI Lab is supported by some of the largest philanthropic organizations worldwide—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

This blog, the second in this series, discusses the role of FinTechs as technology service providers (TSPs) in enabling last-mile lenders, such as MFIs, to adopt the DEPA framework. Read the blog to understand how TSPs can help onboard these institutions onto the DEPA framework while providing other value-added services.

This blog discusses the Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a consent-based system under the IndiaStack that enables data sharing across financial institutions. Here we look at the framework from the perspective of financial inclusion and discuss how microfinance institutions, which cater largely to low and middle-income (LMI) customers, may struggle to adopt AA at this stage.