Advancing Financial Inclusion through Use of Market Archetypes

A new paper by CGAP finds that countries with similar relations between per capita income and population density are also similar in how they leverage digital money solutions to achieve financial inclusion. Advancing Financial Inclusion through Use of Market Archetypes demonstrates how branchless financial solutions develop differently in three types of markets, grouped by similar economic, demographic and policy environment characteristics.

Digital cash brings promising opportunities for financial inclusion, but successes have been difficult to extrapolate and sharing lessons across markets remains a challenge. Advancing Financial Inclusion through Use of Market Archetypes has implications for the planning, investment, and organizational approaches of those involved in promoting financial inclusion. National teams can use this research to choose comparators from countries within similar archetypes, including those outside their own geographic region. Fitting a country into an archetype can give more context to measurements of inclusion and can help investors and donors develop more focused strategies by pooling funds by common archetypes.