Category: Finance

This is the second blog in CGAP’s Digital Merchant Payments series. Read the first blog for context on the urgent need to accelerate digital merchant payments. Despite mobile money’s remarkable success in Sub-Saharan Africa—with approximately 856 million registered mobile money accounts processing over 912 billion USD annually —digital merchant payments (DMP) remain stubbornly limited. Cash […]

Pakistan, once again, has been hit by devastating floods that have displaced thousands, disrupted livelihoods, and highlighted the country’s acute vulnerability to climate change, even as many are still recovering from the floods of 2022.   For financial service providers (FSPs) working with low-income communities, such crises underscore an urgent question: how can they build […]

In the evolving landscape of Africa’s digital economy, cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) has emerged as a transformative force, particularly for rural women entrepreneurs. For women cross-border traders, many of whom engage in agriculture, CBEC and simplified trade procedures offer an opportunity to expand beyond local markets, boost their incomes, and create a financial footprint that can […]

In the Marshall Islands, where the land averages only 7 feet (2 meters) above sea level, people are acutely aware of climate change. Their ancestors have lived on this string of Pacific islands for thousands of years. But as sea level rises, storms more easily flood communities and farmland with saltwater. Warming ocean water has […]

An average gender gap of about 6 percentage points in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), per the latest Findex 2025 data, means that approximately 740 million women are excluded from the financial system, highlighting the need for action. This gap is even higher in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa at about […]

Most Colorado homeowners do not have enough insurance coverage to rebuild their house after a total loss. That’s according to our new research examining whether homes destroyed in Colorado’s Marshall Fire — which burned more than 1,000 houses in suburban Boulder County — have been rebuilt. We are economists who study the financial resources available […]

Halloween is a fun, scary time for children and adults alike – but why does the holiday seem to start so much earlier every year? Decades ago, when I was young, Halloween was a much smaller affair, and people didn’t start preparing until mid-October. Today, in my neighborhood near where I grew up in Massachusetts, […]

The ongoing federal shutdown has resulted in a pause on regular government data releases, meaning economic data has been in short supply of late. That has left market-watchers and monetary policymakers somewhat in the dark over key indicators in the U.S. economy. Fortunately, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers is unaffected by the impasse […]

Dangerous flooding has damaged neighborhoods in almost every state in 2025, leaving homes a muddy mess. In several hard-hit areas, it wasn’t the first time homeowners found themselves tearing out wet wallboard and piling waterlogged carpet by the curb. Wanting to rebuild after flooding is a common response. But for some people, the best way […]

Fossil fuels still power much of the world, even though renewable energy has become cheaper in most places and avoids both pollution and the climate damage caused by burning coal, oil and natural gas. To understand this paradox, it helps to look at how countries – particularly major greenhouse gas emitters, including the U.S., China […]