Financial Inclusion of the Unbanked

NICK FISHER, GENERAL MANAGER, SALES AND MARKETING UK, JCB INTERNATIONAL (EUROPE) LTD, said “The change towards an economy that eliminates physical cash has long been on the prospect in many regions. Sweden is a case study of a country that is rapidly heading towards this approach. Two years before, just 1% of Sweden’s GDP was mixing in cash compared to 11% in the Eurozone, and inquiries by the Swedish Retail and Wholesale Council disclosed that half of the nation’s merchants saying that they will perhaps not accept cash after 2025.”

In the year of 2019, Cash payments decreased by 15 per cent in UK, although liquid cash was still the second most regularly used technique which comprised 23% of all outflows. The Financial Inclusion Commission in the UK stated that there were over 1 million individuals that do not have a bank account, and the World Bank estimated that there were some 1.7 billion adults entirely that still lack access to a bank account. The finance industry has joined forces over these years to develop countless credit products for the comfortable societies. These clients are considered as being at a lower risk. However, establishments should continue to priorities the innovation of services to oblige an audience which still remains ‘unbanked’. Study by EY showed that financial presence could improve GDP by up to 14% in more rural and developing markets like India and by 30% in borderline markets like Kenya. While the optimistic reasons for fully accepting the digital payments and removing physical cash are abundant.  Including lower payment dispensation costs for the retailer and customer accessibility, liquid cash delivers the ‘unbanked’ with the ability to function every day with a permissible tender.

Players are suggested to adopt an inclusive mindset to establish the digital solutions for the unbanked community. This race towards the digital cash morale will eventually get closer to the end line with the running time and passing generation. But the Governments could lend a hand to the unbanked sector by providing an encouraging the financial institutions to sponsor organizations which provide these legal aids and digital cash products to educate them more and help them with the practice of the current world.

Nick Fishers said that, “In my opinion, the financial industry has an significant part to play in evolving the low cost resolutions to support the unbanked with verification tools, such as biometrics and risk tools to achieve real time credit risk reporting with the accessibility.” He also shared that, “In developed countries, we are allotted with a formal identity when we are born, no matter what our situations are, and this comes in the form of a birth certificate and later in life, as a passport. This does not always ensure in evolving countries as resources are often inadequate. Yet there are advances in biometric technologies, such as fingerprint or palm vein which will offer an answer to the obligation for the proof of identity to open a bank account or even to create a mobile wallet. Biometric establishments, payment leaders and modernizers, such as Google Pay and Apple Pay, have partnered to make this into a reality, regardless of the initial cost allegations for its development. In both the types of developing and developed countries, QR codes play a major role since they offer a simple, low cost way of processing the payments even on basic mobile phones. In a survey conducted by the FIS stated that the usage of digital wallets was up to 58 per cent in the year 2020 with regional ecommerce purchases and it was expected to reach 78 per cent by the year 2023.

He concluded saying, “For me at least, a world bereft of the physical cash just can’t be well-thought-out to be responsible, or fair, until everybody can accommodate it.”