Digital Financial Inclusion Strategies

Well, we believe having the ability to save

and transact is something that should be universal and a lot

of forms have adopted that goal.

We won't be able to do that with traditional systems, that is the cost of

bank branches and paperwork, it's just too high.

But fortunately,

starting with countries like Kenya and more recently with a robust system in places

like India, we see that you can

have digital financial inclusion.

India is a great example, they did a lot of their own technology,

which won't be possible for other countries.

And so the role of the Gates Foundation as an advocate for those

who don't have access today is to make sure there's technology and standards,

including open source work that

we're providing through the financial switch, which is called Mojaloop,

and through the digital identity system,

which is extremely valuable, not just for financial activities, but for health

and voting and education, and that's called MoSIP.

Since there isn't going to be a one size fits all solution,

what is the role that you see the private sector playing in being able to

collaborate with different governments to ensure that we move forward?

Well, once you have the digital money system, then there's all sorts of

services and applications that can be built on top of that,

whether it's helping with health or education or agriculture,

giving people visibility into their financial status,

giving them advice, should they take a loan, should they buy insurance,

what makes sense.

The phone becomes

a connection for low cost interaction with those customers that doesn't require

human activity that would be beyond the means

that people are trying to get

to who don't yet have these accounts.

So the digital revolution,

which of course was where I worked before

moving full time to the foundation,

here we're trying to make sure that the developing countries have the benefit of the

digital revolution,

in some cases before it gets to even some of the rich countries who have

legacy systems that people are so used to that the

speed that they'll transition out of them won't be as fast as,

say, China or India that didn't have that

And so it's really learning what worked in China and India and now

making it easy

for even smaller countries to do this, working with a lot of partners, including

the World Bank, African Development Bank, many of them.

So private sector will help these central banks create these systems,

but moreover, the phone companies, the banks and the

entrepreneurs will build applications that use these financial capabilities.