Accelerating Financial Inclusion in South-East Asia with Digital Finance

Digital finance presents a potentially transformational opportunity to advance financial inclusion. This paper focuses specifically on areas where digital financial services have significant potential to accelerate financial inclusion through their impact on existing business models.

The study provides recommendations for governments and regulatory authorities on how to encourage the development of digital financial services to increase inclusion. In particular, it examines financial inclusion at the base of the pyramid, for women, and for micro, small, and medium enterprises in four Southeast Asian markets: Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Myanmar. The four markets chosen for this study represent the diverse market structures and development stages allowing to draw out common themes that may resonate in other emerging markets as well as important market-specific nuances that may only apply to a narrower group.