Publication: Using Biometric Technology in Rural Credit Markets : The Case of Malawi
Loading...
Published
2010-05
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The eleventh in series of impact notes profiles an innovative attempt to improve access to credit in Malawi through the use of biometric technology.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Giné, Xavier. 2010. Using Biometric Technology in Rural Credit Markets : The Case of Malawi. Finance & PSD Impact; No. 11. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10189 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Digital Identity Toolkit : A Guide for Stakeholders in Africa(Washington, DC, 2014-06)Digital identity, or electronic identity (eID), offers developing nations a unique opportunity to accelerate the pace of their national progress. It changes the way services are delivered, helps grow a country's digital economy, and supports effective safety nets for disadvantaged and impoverished populations. Though digital identity is an opportunity, it raises important considerations with respect to privacy, cost, capacity, and long-term viability. This report provides a strategic view of the role of identification in a country's national development, as well as a tactical view of the building blocks and policy choices needed for setting up eID in a developing country. The report presents a conceptual overview of digital identity management practices, providing a set of guidelines at a national level that policymakers can find helpful as they begin to think about modernizing the identity infrastructure of their country into eID. The report also provides an operating knowledge of the terminology and concepts used in identity management and an exposition of the functional blocks that must be in place. Policy considerations are referenced at the end of the report that governments can use as they contemplate a digital identity program. Given its abridged nature, the report is intended to be insightful and detailed, though not exhaustive. Several important topics related to eID are noted though deserve further discussion, including: economic and financial analysis, the development and setup of a national civil register, and cross-border aspects of eID. The building blocks, as discussed, can help ensure that a secure, robust and reliable digital identity platform can serve the development needs of a country for the foreseeable future.Publication Improving Payment Mechanisms in Cash-Based Safety Net Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08)Cash transfers have proliferated in the past decade as key policy instruments to tackle vulnerability and inequality. Payment mechanisms (PMs), the backbone of cash transfers, are the channels through which cash travels from the funding source to the hands of beneficiaries. In theory, the harmonization of payment flows in PMs with other program processes is critical to delivering the right benefit to the right people at the right time while minimizing costs. In reality, however, PMs tend to remain disconnected, rendering payments inefficient and plagued by error, fraud and corruption. In recent years, program operators, financial institutions, and technology innovators have developed strategies for streamlining payment flows. These innovations, if properly integrated into program management through a Management Information System (MIS) and supported by rigorous outreach, can not only promote efficiency and transparency but also ensure effectiveness. This paper provides a framework for integrating PMs within program management. It walks the reader through seven basic steps to process payments. It does so by articulating the flow of beneficiary information and funds from the point of beneficiary enrollment to payment reconciliation and grievance redress. It also looks at the framework through the lenses of different cash transfer interventions and the cases of Kenya, Rwanda, and Mexico. The paper concludes that to execute successful PMs it is key to: (i) integrate payments within an MIS; (ii) adopt a cost-effective mix of traditional and technology instruments suitable to the country's context in the short and long run; (iii) decentralize the control and accountability of service provision across government levels; (iv) understand the capacity and incentives of stakeholders; (v) provide manuals, training and information to key players; and (vi) enforce payment parameters and penalize their violation.Publication Authentication and Digital Signatures in E-Law and Security : A Guide for Legislators and Managers(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-12)The concept of authentication has been around for a long time in many forms. For example due diligence in commerce has traditionally been formalized to determine whether the data presented in commercial propositions are accurate and comprehensive. With the emergence of e-commerce the concept of authentication has encompassed new realities that are a feature of the relatively narrow avenues for information and potentially high risks inherent in an online environment. This paper seeks to provide an understanding about the different ways of assuring authentication. These authentication rules and tools including for example public key infrastructure (PKI) are sometimes meant to set a legal and technological framework for trustworthy electronic transactions, promoting e-procurement, e-commerce, e-business, and e-government. The two considerations of business risk and legal validity are both intrinsic to the concept of authentication. This report explores the issues and solutions affecting the concept of authentication in terms of legislation, management and technology. This report finds that for online authentication things is not always what they may seem and that legislation and technology alone cannot build a trust environment and, if misunderstood, may produce a high risk illusion. It is crucial that the limitations and fallibility of the technology be explicit in its commercial applications and that business risks be managed accordingly.Publication Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption : Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)The adoption of new agricultural technologies may be discouraged because of their inherent riskiness. This study implemented a randomized field experiment to ask whether the provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to invest in a new crop variety. The study sample was composed of roughly 800 maize and groundnut farmers in Malawi, where by far the dominant source of production risk is the level of rainfall. We randomly selected half of the farmers to be offered credit to purchase high-yielding hybrid maize and improved groundnut seeds for planting in the November 2006 crop season. The other half of the farmers were offered a similar credit package but were also required to purchase (at actuarially fair rates) a weather insurance policy that partially or fully forgave the loan in the event of poor rainfall. Surprisingly, take up was lower by 13 percentage points among farmers offered insurance with the loan. Take-up was 33.0 percent for farmers who were offered the uninsured loan. There is suggestive evidence that the reduced take-up of the insured loan was due to the high cognitive cost of evaluating the insurance: insured loan take-up was positively correlated with farmer education levels. By contrast, the take-up of the uninsured loan was uncorrelated with farmer education.Publication New Technologies, New Risks? Innovation and Countering the Financing of Terrorism(World Bank, 2010)Recent developments in the way financial services are delivered have provided both opportunities for economic development and prompted fears of their attractiveness for crimes such as terrorist financing. This paper explores four innovations, value cards, mobile financial services, online banking and payments, and digital currencies, outlining how they work, analyzing their risks, and identifying some ways in which governments and providers are attempting to reduce their attractiveness to financiers of terrorism. Determining what the actual risks are is critical to ensuring that laws and regulations balance both the need to protect integrity in the market and to create an environment friendly to business and empowering to the poor. The paper concludes that these new methods of payment do not offer particular usefulness to terrorist financiers. However, some of these channels could be attractive for general criminal abuse because they have an ambiguous place in the legal regime. Providers therefore, may not know about or elect to properly mitigate risks. The industry is encouraged to work within itself to share information to prevent and detect criminal activity. Governments should consult with industry in deciding regulation and industry should notify government prior to rolling out a new service. This will make government oversight more effective. Lastly, since many of these services are international in scope, government coordination and awareness rising is central.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.