About Us

What is DFS?

Digital financial services (DFS) refers to a range of formal financial services accessible via digital accounts through a distribution network.

Customers usually access their access their account using a mobile phone or card in combination with an agent, merchant or ATM. Digital finance requires an ecosystem of cooperating private and public actors to function properly.

What are Digital Solutions?

Digital solutions are digital applications that solve problems or create opportunities. When linked with digital finance, they can help overcome challenges by providing better management tools, financial education, and pay-as-you-go solutions for water and energy. They can also help solve specific sustainable development goals, such as better health information, quality education and more sustainable cities and communities.

UNCDF supports digital finance solutions because we are concerned that the countries that need digital finance the most are succeeding the least. Digital Finance is not easy. Governments, providers and customers all face challenges in growing the market and we wanted to help to make sure the benefits of digital finance are not limited to middle income countries and families.

The Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P) programme helps build inclusive digital financial sectors such that a wide range of services are provided responsibly, and at reasonable cost, by sustainable institutions in a well-regulated environment.

What do we do?

UNCDF MM4P uses a market development approach that combines a mix of technical and financial and policy support. To guide us, we’ve mapped out the digital finance ecosystem into several key component parts that represent the partners with whom we work. In each country we partner with policymakers, regulators, providers, distributors and the users of digital finance that are needed to grow the market. We also help them work together.

Digital finance is now pervasive in UNCDF’s portfolio supporting much of its work in financial inclusion and more recently, local development finance.

Our Team

UNCDF’s success is due to its team of full time professional with digital expertise place in the countries where we work. Our team is largely drawn from the industry – banks, mobile money providers, insurance companies and regulators -who are grounded in the reality of how things get done. We have over 25 full time experts in 8 countries.

Contact our team

Our Partners

Stories from the Field