Signature Projects

With the MetLife Foundation’s support, MSC has designed a global signature program for female entrepreneurs in India, Nepal, and Vietnam. The program’s focus areas are to build better livelihoods and income for these entrepreneurs, improve their financial health by enhancing their digital footprints, provide access to various financial services, and improve market linkage. MSC developed Sangini Konect, a platform under the program for women-led businesses in India. The platform supports them through various learning tools to grow their businesses and empowers them to improve their financial and digital capabilities.

MSC (MicroSave Consulting) has been at the forefront of the payments industry, working with banks, FinTechs, agent network managers (ANMs), policymakers, and regulators in the payments ecosystem. Over the past years, we started producing reports for the industry, highlighting trends in the payments space, and received an overwhelming response. As we continued our work, we asked ourselves: How can we demystify these insights for those interested in the space? How can we provide details on payment trends from a 360-degree perspective? How can we share exciting trends from this growing industry? We bring you our latest creation—Payments Instruments Rails (PIN Rails), which unveils developments in India’s ever-growing digital payment ecosystem. PIN Rails dives deep into the what, how, and why of the Indian digital payments landscape. Through this public good, we expect to share developments and trends from the changing digital payments ecosystem through a one-stop interactive dashboard.

MSC conducted a digital readiness assessment and provided HFC a proof of concept report. We provided project management services for the pilot and helped HFC launch its mobile application—HF Whizz. By the end of 2020, HFC acquired 200,000-plus new virtual accounts through the application, mobilized more than KES 100 million (USD 1 million) from these new accounts within a year, and saw transactions on their digital platforms grow by 20% to 1.24 million.

MSC assessed the different pricing mechanisms for the distribution of digital transfers. MSC analyzed different social protection programs extensively in Asia and Africa. We developed a pricing tool and a dissemination strategy for program designers. We also formulated a handy reference for social program managers by analyzing approaches used to distribute transfers.

MSC supported IPPB in providing financial services to poor and rural communities. MSC planned to undertake a diagnostic study to conduct an institutional assessment for IPPB and provide insights on the current stage of its operations and challenges. At the time of writing, the expected outcomes are an efficient CICO network, suitable product and channel lines at the local level, streamlined G2P and bulk payment processes, and a comprehensive ecosystem of merchants to support customers at the last mile to drive digital transactions.

MSC provided technical assistance to Airtel Money to meet the following objectives: 1. Build a sustainable cash-in cash-out (CICO) agent network; 2. Develop a pro-poor communication strategy; 3. Enhance the digital financial services Airtel Money offers and improve the customer value proposition and experience.