FinTech and financial inclusion: Opportunities and challenges

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Abstract: Financial inclusion, in essence, is about promoting broader access to and usage of financial services, in particular payment services. At the heart of payment services are transaction accounts. This paper will describe the crucial role played by transaction accounts and how stakeholders can promote access and use of these accounts. It will also look at recent FinTech developments and highlight the role innovations can play in broadening access to financial services while addressing the related risks. The discussion will be based on two reports on payment aspects of financial inclusion released by the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and the World Bank. The framework developed to promote access and use of transaction accounts in the first report underpins the second report, which assesses the potential of FinTech developments for financial inclusion.

Keywords: financial inclusion, FinTech, transaction account, payment services, innovation

Marc Hollanders has recently retired from the Bank for International Settlements, where he was Special Adviser on Financial Infrastructure. He has also served as Head of the Secretariat of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). Marc was Co-Chair of the CPMI-World Bank task force that published the reports ‘Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion’ (2016), ‘Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion in the FinTech Era’ (2020) and ‘Pay ment Aspects of Financial Inclusion: Application Tools’ (2020).