Case Study: Women's Empowerment through Financial Inclusion Technology
Deetken Impact, through its Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund, supported FINCA Haiti to expand its lending services to individuals, micro and small- and medium-sized businesses. The investment aimed to grow FINCA Haiti’s network of branches and digital financial services and build its capacity to develop customer-centric and gender-sensitive financial products.
FINCA Haiti partnered with Digicel, the largest telecom provider in the country, to offer clients (90 percent of whom are women) the option to make their loan repayments via mobile phone—a service called MonCash. MonCash is a digital wallet that can hold a currency balance in a digital account that can be accessed using a user’s mobile phone. And the phone doesn’t have to be a smartphone since it is code-based rather than using an interface. Instead of having to make a long and expensive trip to a FINCA branch, this new service allows clients—at no additional cost to them—to transfer their payments via mobile phone using a nearby MonCash agent.
This case study speaks directly to the promotion of financial inclusion for women and equal access to capital, markets, digital technology and business development services. The initiative is a true testament to how access to credit, mobile technology and digital literacy are jointly contributing toward women’s economic empowerment.
The case study was published by the British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) as part of its “Leveraging the Interlinkages: Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment and the Sustainable Development Goals” report with the intention of presenting it to the Commission of the Status of Women (CW64) at the UN in March 2020.