According to recent studies, around 2 billion people don’t use, or have access to, formal financial services and more than 50% of adults are unbanked. The lack of access to the financial system in a sustained way is often termed “financial inclusion” which means persons, or businesses, that are excluded from the regulated and formal financial system. Financial inclusion is key to reducing poverty and supporting economic growth and prosperity for all countries.

As we move towards a digital economy and digital finance, it will become critically important to ensure that policies and new FinTech are geared towards financial inclusion remediation.

At the Digital Finance Institute, we are enabling a project for financial inclusion called “Banking on Refugees” that addresses financial inclusion for refugees.

No Programs Exist for Refugees and Financial Inclusion

There are 60 million displaced persons and refugees around the world and the number keeps increasing. However, there are no existing programs that target financial inclusion, per se, for refugees. The Digital Finance Institute enables the project by assisting to find ways to make connections for the development of FinTech innovation to bridge inclusion gaps in conflict torn zones.

The project is multi-faceted and involves preparing a White Paper on Financial Inclusion for Refugees, followed by a test pilot with digital payment solutions for refugees with biometric identification for government agencies and NGOs that complies with global anti-money laundering laws.

Refugee Bank

At the conclusion of the pilot, the project will move towards implementing a program of global financial inclusion with payments solutions (a Refugee Bank), coupled with biometric identification capture targeted at the refugee population and will the first such program in the world.

To learn more about how the Digital Finance Institute is working to enable financial inclusion for refugees: