With support from The MasterCard Foundation, Microfinance Opportunities is currently working with local partners in India, Malawi, the Philippines and Zambia to design and develop financial education programs that support the adoption and sustained use of branchless banking among low-income populations. The primary goal of this three-year initiative is to test how financial education can help poor people access formal financial products through mobile phone banking and card-based technologies. Ongoing consumer research and lessons learned from the initiative will help practitioners understand the opportunities for branchless banking and financial education among these populations – particularly among youth, women and rural communities – and result in a financial education toolkit expected to inform more than 500,000 consumers about branchless banking.

Local partners: FINO Fintech Foundation (India), Mobile Transactions (Zambia), Opportunity International Bank of Malawi, and tThe Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) through its USAID-supported Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) program.