Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion: Consultative Report

This report from the CPMI-World Bank Group Task Force on the Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion (PAFI) aims to examine demand and supply side factors affecting financial inclusion in the context of payment systems and services, and to suggest measures that could be taken to address these issues. 

This report is premised on two key points: (i) efficient, accessible, and safe retail payment systems and services are critical for greater financial inclusion; and (ii) a transaction account is an essential financial service in its own right and can also serve as a gateway to other financial services. 

The report is structured into five chapters:

1. Introduction and general overview, including a description of the PAFI Task Force and its mandate, a brief discussion of transaction accounts, and the barriers to the access and usage of such accounts.
2. Overview of the retail payments landscape from a financial inclusion perspective.
3. Core analytical portion of the report, outlining a framework for enabling access and usage of payment services by the financially excluded. 
4. Description of the key policy objectives when looking at financial inclusion from a payments perspective, with a number of suggestions in the form of guiding principles and key actions for consideration.
5. Issues in connection with measuring the effectiveness of financial inclusion efforts in the context of payments and payment services, with a particular emphasis on transaction account adoption and usage.