It was obvious from the outset that improving women’s access to digital financial services would become a thrust area of the Innovation Fund for Mobile Money. Since the project’s launch in 2013, BRAC Social Innovation Lab has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to experiment with mobile money services and products. We initially piloted within a number of programmes before deciding to scale our solutions in Microfinance, Education, and Integrated Development. The project has since introduced female clients to mobile money through savings products, salary and school fee collection.

The reason to primarily focus on women was that anecdotal experience and research both indicate that household expenditure on food and education increase when women have greater control over income. Further, women are more likely to save and use those savings to invest in their own businesses and in a better future. And the benefits of closing the gender gap in financial inclusion don’t stop with women or remain limited to the present. Greater equality also enhances economic productivity and improves development outcomes for the next generation.

This booklet is our fourth in a series documenting the experience of scaling mobile money. And this time, we have dedicated it to the women of BRAC: those we work for, and with. In it, we will highlight three key drivers we have identified behind the persistent gender gap in Bangladesh, and the steps we have taken in response. We will describe how our female staff and clients have tested, adopted, and (most importantly) adapted mobile money in ways that make sense for them. And we will share our observations of the power of women in acting as agents of change: how progress towards financial wellbeing is not limited to just a single client opening a wallet, but ripples outwards to encompass families, communities, and economies.

As recently as two decades ago, Bangladesh’s rural north was riddled with poverty and experienced monga (famine-like situation). The south was ravaged by cyclones. In the north east, transportation by boat was the only option for almost three quarters of a year. The West was far from what we mean by the global ‘West’. However, progress spread quickly across the country in the form of concrete roads, resilient crops and affordable medicines. Bangladesh is now poised to become the 26th largest economy in the world by 2030, lifting millions out of poverty in the process....

It is widely accepted that financial inclusion is key to reducing poverty and achieving inclusive economic growth. Yet, the Global Findex shows that as of 2017, about 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked - without an account at a financial institution or through mobile money. Globally, half of the unbanked adults come from the poorest 40 percent households of their economy. Of the unbanked, 56% are women.1 In developing nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jordan and Nigeria, cultural norms play a role, limiting women’s access to accounts and agents.

Studies find that women’s usage of mobile money is linked with improvement of their household’s earning potential and future wellbeing. Research shows that in both Indonesia and Tanzania, women micro-entrepreneurs encouraged to open mobile savings accounts reported having greater household decision-making power than those who did not have mobile savings.

A study in Kenya demonstrated how mobile money enabled women-headed households to increase their savings by more than a fifth, allowing 185,000 women to start up small businesses.