Digital Financial Services (DFS) Advisory
Our vision for digital finance is to advance resilience, well-being, empowerment, and equity for underserved communities by fostering the development of open, inclusive, and secure digital finance ecosystems and economies worldwide.
Digital financial services — financial services enabled by or delivered through digital technology — are having a transformative effect on the financial sector and digital economies across developing countries and emerging markets. Across much of the world, the last two decades have seen the emergence of new business models and services in finance. These have ridden the wave of the mobile — and later, Internet — revolution.
Digital Financial Services (DFS) (also called “financial technology,” or FinTech) are financial services enabled by or delivered through digital technology (e.g., mobile phones, cards, and the internet). These services (payments, credit, insurance, and savings, advisory) can be offered by a range of providers, from banks to a host of non-bank financial institutions, such as microfinance institutions, digital credit providers, payment providers, FinTech companies, and electronic money issuers.
Our digital finance practice works to overcome barriers preventing access to and usage of these vital services by partnering with governments, watchdog groups, universities, donors, the private sector, and underserved communities around the world to support financial systems and policies that increase transparency, open new and inclusive markets, and address our most pressing humanitarian and development challenges.
To advance this vision, Our Digital Finance team:
- Manages strategic initiatives to spotlight issues, catalyze collection action, demonstrate programmatic approaches, or support experimentation;
- Provides advisory support and capacity-building to Agency staff and partners;
- Engages in thought leadership, research, and convening with a range of stakeholders; and
- Coordinates collaborations
