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La transición de un modelo de servicios financieros informales grupales hacia servicios financieros digitales formales e individuales puede traer consigo consecuencias inesperadas, como lo es la reducción de los efectos positivos ligados a la presión social. Una posible respuesta a este problema son los mensajes SMS. Más allá de su habilidad de priorizar y recordar distintas metas financieras, los mensajes SMS pueden ser herramientas eficientes y efectivas para establecer y mantener los efectos positivos ligados a la presión social....

Por Gabriella Wong & Hugo Salas

¿Pueden los mensajes de texto influir en el comportamiento financiero? IPA está trabajando en estrecha colaboración con SBS para descubrir cómo mejorar los puntajes crediticios en Perú.

Según statisticbrain.com, una de las resoluciones de año nuevo más populares de 2017 fue tomar mejores decisiones financieras. Sin embargo, en Perú, casi 1,2 millones de personas (16% de los que tienen alguna deuda con el sistema financiero regulado), están atrasadas en el pago de sus deudas. Esto podría tener implicaciones negativas para su futuro...

If buying a $20 subway fare card with a debit card can result in ten unexpected overdraft fees for $358, why would you choose using a checking account at all? For many consumers, there are important benefits and a perfectly rational logic to not taking part in a formal financial system. According to the FDIC’s most recent National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Household, almost 20% of Americans are underbanked, meaning that they hold an account at an insured institution but also use financial products outside of the banking system.

There is an argument that these consumers...

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on the African Microfinance Week site.

The mobile money revolution offers microfinance institutions and banks an opportunity to better serve their clients and reach new customer segments, especially women. New product innovations may have the potential to bring more women into the formal financial fold, but the expansion of digital financial services remains limited by women’s access to and use of mobile phones and other digital tools. Even when women do have access to mobile phones, they may not know how to use them, particularly...

Editor's note: This blog is a cross-post from the NextBillion blog.

Imagine you had to attend a weekly meeting to make your credit card payments. In today’s fast-moving world where we expect instant gratification and convenience at all costs, this practice might seem unthinkable. However, informal microfinance groups which, among other things, involve regular group meetings are necessary financial tools in low-income communities across the globe, allowing those outside of the formal financial sector to access loans and to save. These groups are often built into an established...

Editors note: This blog is a cross-post from the SEEP blog

In 2006, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded a Nobel Peace Prize to one of the original architects of modern-day microfinance, Professor Muhammad Yunus. Professor Yunus’s microfinance model, along with similar group-liability lending models targeting women throughout the world, was based on a simple premise. Women could increase their incomes – and thereby, their own lots and the future of their families – by owning and operating their own microenterprises. Yunus and others surmised that a lack of access to capital stood...