Contact us: digitalwages@ilo.org
Contact us: digitalwages@ilo.org
This report discusses findings from human-centred design research around the use of cash-in and cash-out services conducted with 400 persons in Bangladesh, India, Northern Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Tanzania, including about 250 women. It presents the key challenges women face,…
Over the past decades, the dissemination of technology and digital infrastructures has opened up new and seemingly unparalleled opportunities for sustained growth and innovation. Markets have become more interconnected, digital products and services have mushroomed around the world, and digital…
In the absence of regulatory guardrails, some earned wage access programs can perpetuate, and in some instances exacerbate, the very risks providers claim to eliminate when displacing short-term creditors like payday lenders. This article proposes a federal-level regulatory framework based…
This report provides recommendations to make credible advances on responsible payments digitization for workers in Senegal, with an emphasis on raising awareness of the benefits and costs amongst key stakeholders, promoting trust and fair digital payment standards, introducing targeted incentives…
This article analyses the earned wage access market, assesses the likelihood that it will displace payday lending, and reveals some of the dangers lurking beneath the low-cost surface of these transactions. It argues that earned wage access products have the…
This research brief outlines key findings on the impact of mobile money on poverty. It shares evidence from a range of studies about the effects of mobile money on individuals and households and about the user experience of payment transfers…
This article synthesizes research about the long-term costs of debt inequality on communities of colour in the United States of America, adding an in-depth analysis of several new advances in banking and lending, and proposing several key principles for reducing…
The ILO and Women’s World Banking, along with the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade hosted a webinar on digital wage payments given its potential to empower workers, particularly women workers, by increasing their control over their wages…
This report summarizes the discussion of a virtual conference on the opportunities and challenges created by digital wage payments, organized on 3 February 2021 by the International Organisation of Employers, in collaboration with the International Labour Organization and the Better…
How do inexperienced consumers learn to use a new financial technology? This paper presents results from a field experiment that introduced payroll accounts in a population of largely unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh. In the experiment, workers in a treatment…