Innovative methods such as organizing fairs are crucial to the continued expansion of financial inclusion. These events convey the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that micro-merchants need to adopt good financial management practices and customers’ awareness of how to use such services.

Financial inclusion brings major benefits to individuals such as the micro merchants and the entire populations. By allowing people to invest in their future, smooth consumption, and manage risk, access to and use of a range of financial services help reduce poverty and inequality. Yet, despite the benefits, micro-merchants are mostly untapped. More than half of the micro-merchants (57%) in Bangladesh do not even have access to a bank account.

According to a World Bank report, Bangladesh has been among the 10 fastest growing economies in the world and is expected to grow at an even faster pace if it implemented economic reforms. One of the main drivers of this growth is the micro and the small businesses of the country; more than $18.42 billion a year is transacted by over 2 million people through micro-merchant retail trade, according to The Landscape Assessment of Micro-Merchants in Bangladesh study conducted by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

Recognizing the potential of micro-merchants in Bangladesh, UNCDF SHIFT under the “Merchants Development Driving Rural Markets” (MDDRM) project, have been working to stimulate the expansion of digital technologies for micro-merchant segments by encouraging innovation and linkages between retail and service industries.

Despite the proliferation of digital payments, the small micro-merchants and customers, especially in the rural areas, often prefers cash over any digital payments due to factors such as lack of literacy and awareness leading to a decrease in confidence to more complex factors such as lack of identity. It is no doubt that innovation is important to the growth of the micro-merchants, but successful innovation requires a balance between demand and supply.

However, sometimes it takes as little as organizing a fair with innovative methods to change somebody’s behavior in the desired direction or to inspire them.

Knowledge and trust are some of the significant hurdles as observed in the case of micro-merchants. Despite observing the benefits of digital payments, many micro merchants are apprehensive in adopting them due to limited demand for the customers. To overcome this hurdle, under the SHIFT-MDDRM project, Dnet (one of the consortium members of SHIFT MDDRM, led by UNCDF and funded by the European Union) organized two 2-day long fairs in Tangail and Jamalpur in 2019.

The objective of the Digital Innovation Fairs was to increase awareness among rural consumers and micro-merchants on digital financial services and consumer rights protection, responsibilities and business practice of micro-merchants and manufacturers as per the Consumer Rights Protection Act of 2009.

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