The Future Of Finance Initiative

Digital payments are currently being envisioned as a gateway to financial inclusion for the poor and marginalised in India. In this article, Indradeep Ghosh, Executive Director, Dvara Research, examines the rationale for such a vision. He argues that the penetration of digital payments remains low for the poor and marginalised, partly because of unfavourable economics and partly because digital payments interfaces are not well designed to suit this segment. If India can overcome these two hurdles, then digital payments can indeed become more common among the poor and marginalised, and thereby catalyse much wider and deeper financial inclusion in India than has hitherto been possible.

This blog post summarises literature regarding users who are most likely to face difficulties in using digital payments, and some design principles and best practices that could simplify digital payment interfaces.

India’s Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (the Bill) was introduced in Parliament in December 2019, and is currently under consideration by a Joint Parliamentary Committee of MPs.

Even when women are not the primary borrowers of formal finance, studies note that they remain responsible for ensuring timely repayments.

Digital formal finance can potentially reduce the physical and social distance between women and financial services.

In this blog post, we present our comments to the Report of the Working Group on Digital Lending including Lending through Online Platforms and Mobile Apps, November 2021 (the Report) in response to the call for comments from all stakeholders by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Providing a human interface at crucial touch points such consent, disclosure, and grievance redressal will allow for trust in fintech to rise, driving financial inclusion

In this policy brief, we review the literature to uncover the deficiencies of the consent model and propose measures to improve the consent artefact for new to technology and constrained users.

Disruptive innovations (mainly through digitalisation) are resulting in a change in the structure of markets and their functioning, emergence of new business models as well as new products and processes (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2017).

This post explores the promise of the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) systems in improving the quality of redress available to consumers