Global Development Institute Blog

By Stuart Rutherford, Honorary Research Fellow at The Global Development Institute

In developing countries like Bangladesh, Digital Financial Services (DFS) usually refers to transactions made over the mobile phone, using variants of the system pioneered in Kenya by m-Pesa.

There is much optimism that DFS can revolutionise financial inclusion: for example, the incoming CEO of CGAP recently said that ‘what took banks over 100 years to do in Africa has been achieved by mobile operators in 10’. Others are far more cautious, pointing out that just having a mobile money account doesn’t mean someone is ‘financially included’ and that the range of services offered by DFS still falls short of the real needs of low-income people.

In this context, we looked at what the Hrishipara Daily Diaries show us about DFS use in central Bangladesh:

For the period 2017-2019 the Financial Diaries Project is receiving support from UNCDF’s Shaping Inclusive Finance Transformation (SHIFT) Programme.

 

Read more analysis based on the Hrishipara Diaries:

 

Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.