💸Payments
P2P, P2M, B2B, G2P, and P2G.
Payments are the lifeblood of an economy. Without frictionless and low cost digital payments, commerce is bottlenecked. When payments are largely cash-based without viable digital alternatives,
Remote commerce and eCommerce suffers (particularly in the face of physical restrictions or remoteness barriers such as those imposed by COVID); and
Physical commerce faces higher frictions and challenges (loss of value due to lack of availability of exact change, increased likelihood of robberies/theft, etc).
While digital payments are not new, a DPI approach is distinct from existing types of digital payments in it they creates inclusion, innovation, and unprecedented scale of access that allows for diverse user experiences (over smartphone, feature phones, or no-phones).
To ask whether the payments in your country is operating as a Digital Public Infrastructure, simply answer this: is a majority of the population in my country, (particularly those of lower incomes) able to access and regularly use a reliable means of digital payment at affordable cost to them? If not, and a payments system is used only by the elite sections of a country while much of the population prefers/relies on cash, there is scope in your country for a DPI transformation in payments that could catalyse the digital economy.
In particular, we explore 5 powerful payments interventions to trigger a DPI transformation:
Financial Address Mapper (G2P Social Benefit/Cash transfer Payments)
Cash in Cash Out (CiCO) for Interoperable agents in cash withdrawal
Interoperable bill payments protocol
All types of transactions - whether between people, businesses, and / or government - can be powered by the same protocol that allows for interoperable payments! The protocol is agnostic to payment device, currency, type of transaction etc.
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