Five Principles for Building Women's Capacity for Digital Financial Services

The access to accounts driven by digitized government-to-person (G2P) payments is not translating into full financial inclusion, which means that women are not using the accounts beyond cashing out, and therefore not fully realizing the benefits of the programs. The question is: “Why”?

While there are several supply-side factors affecting women’s full participation (poorly designed products, lack of choice, etc.), one of the more common hypotheses is that women lack the knowledge and skills to manage the accounts through which they receive their transfer, and are therefore unable to make informed financial decisions about those accounts.

If capacity building is required for women G2P recipients, we need to ensure programs are not only effective, but also viable in terms of financial and operational efficiency, if they are to reach any magnitude of scale.  This publication introduces a set of five principles to support stakeholders to meet these important goals.