In Malawi, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) supports in partnership with the European Commission and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific states the development of new use-cases, products or business models that could drive outcomes around Inclusive Digital Economies and the expansion of Digital Financial Services for segments currently left behind, such as women, youth and other vulnerable segments in the low-income groups.

Identification credentials for the purpose of accessing and using financial services continues to be a barrier worldwide. According to the World Bank Group’s 2018 Global Dataset, an estimated one billion people around the globe face challenges in proving who they are.

At the request of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, UNCDF is planning to support the implementation of a centralized e-KYC platform to help advance financial inclusion in Malawi.

Malawi recently made strong progress in building a foundation of identity solutions across the country. A nationwide mass registration initiative, led by the National Registry and Identification System, resulted in the successful registration of over 9.2 million citizens. However, the financial sector continues to observe problems caused by non-uniformity of identifying customers in financial service provider databases. This is arising from the different forms of identification used by the same customer. In addition, use of manual Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures by financial service providers renders the process of identifying customers inefficient and cumbersome. Considering this, electronic-KYC (e-KYC) and digital identity have been identified as solutions that have the potential to help address the challenges above and increase access to financial products and services.

UNCDF is looking for partners to implement a e-KYC diagnostic in Malawi. The primary objective of the country diagnostic is to understand the current situation in Malawi and to provide recommendations in regard to a potential implementation of the e-KYC solution. The diagnostic will also inform the drafting of the inclusive digital transformation framework for e-KYC.

UNCDF plans to invest up to a total of USD 50,000 in grant funding towards an e-KYC diagnostic and framework for Malawi. The findings of this study will be publicly available for all Malawi digital economy stakeholders.

All applications must be submitted by 23:59 EDT time on April 7, 2022 through UNCDF e-investment platform. However, please visit UNCDF e-investment platform to verify if this deadline has not been extended.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Please submit your proposal trough this e-investment platform. Submissions using other templates or sent by other electronic or non electronic means will not be eligible.

For queries write to iris.kissiti@uncdf.org cc uncdf.rfa@uncdf.org