Visa and the GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation (GSMA Foundation) have launched the Digital Finance for All (DFA) Initiative, aiming to expand digital financial services to 20 million people. This includes women, smallholder farmers, and small business owners in various regions, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America, over the next five years.
The DFA Initiative will focus on several key areas to address these issues, according to Visa and the GSMA Foundation:
- Providing financial education through a mobile financial literacy toolkit to facilitate access to mobile money services.
- Conducting research in partnership with the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute and the GSMA Foundation to advocate for and innovate financial inclusion products.
- Digitizing smallholder farmers and small businesses to encourage their use of digital financial services.
- Promoting financial inclusion for refugees and their host communities.
The initiative comes in response to the growing use of digital payments, which has seen a significant rise among adults in low- and middle-income countries. However, disparities persist, with women in these areas less likely to own a financial account and smallholder farmers often excluded from formal financial services.
[Image courtesy: Visa]