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Periodic Essay
How Digital Innovation Can Increase Small Business Access to Finance in Asia
Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a key contributor to economic activity around the world as an important source of jobs, growth, and innovation. Despite their essential role, SMEs receive a disproportionately small share of credit from the financial system, a trend that persists across developed and developing countries, including in Asia. This paper summarizes the SME credit gap in Asia and assesses ways certain emerging technologies and innovative business models?commonly known as ?fintech??can improve SME access to financial services in Asia and boost long-term economic ...
Periodic Essay
Asia’s Fintech Revolution
Driven by the proliferation of new technologies and startups, financial systems across Asia are undergoing a significant transformation. Finance in Asia has been historically dominated by large banks, many of which have been slow to embrace technological change thereby leaving many parts of the economy underserved in terms of access to financial services. The growing ubiquity of mobile phones, the internet, and other technologies have given rise to new ways of delivering financial services, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ?fintech.? The companies leading the introduction of these new ...
Periodic Essay
Priority sector lending in Asia
This Asia Focus discusses Asia?s experience with priority sector lending, reviews the current state-level priority sector lending policies in several Asian economies, assesses the implications for the respective domestic banking systems, and examines potential alternative mechanisms to encourage lending to priority sectors.
Periodic Essay
Modernizing the payment system to increase financial inclusion in India
Payments in India remain heavily cash reliant. This dependence creates economic inefficiencies and limits efforts to include the unbanked in the formal financial system. In response, the government has introduced a number of policies to promote non-cash payments, bolster the payments infrastructure, provide hundreds of millions of new payment-capable accounts to the unbanked, and encourage new technology and innovation by non-traditional firms. This Asia Focus reviews the role non-cash payments can play in India?s financial inclusion efforts, summarizes recent government policies to develop a ...