2025 AFI GPF: Inclusive Policy Studio – Impact Stories and Showcase

Summary of Key Financial Strategies, Market Analyses, and Business Trends

Namibia: Inclusive Financial System Transformation

• Context & Challenge:
  • Despite a stable, profitable financial sector, Namibia’s system excluded large portions of the population, especially rural communities, women, youth, and informal traders.
  • Example: Chuma, a small-scale farmer, had no access to banking or financial safety nets during severe droughts.
  • Financial exclusion was not just about statistics but real human stories of resilience and exclusion.
• Strategic Vision:
  • Reimagine the financial system as an active catalyst for inclusive growth, with inclusion as the core DNA, not an afterthought or CSR activity.
  • Financial system to empower all Namibians, leaving no one behind.
• 2025-2035 Financial Sector Transformation Strategy Pillars:
  1. Broadening financial markets to direct capital to underserved groups (small traders, farmers, innovators).
  2. Driving digital transformation and innovation to reach remote areas and enable fintech.
  3. Prioritizing financial access, literacy, and consumer protection to empower and protect users.
  4. Financial sector localization to build homegrown expertise and leadership.
  5. Investing in skills and human capital to equip people for inclusive finance.
• Implementation Highlights:
  • Extensive consultations with communities across all regions and languages.
  • Regulatory reforms to enable microfinance, agent banking, and branchless banking with lowered capital requirements.
  • Revitalized e-money framework and smart, enabling regulations tailored to local realities.
  • Developed fintech innovation hubs and regulatory sandboxes with digital tools like chatbots for licensing guidance.
  • Focus on digital public infrastructure: digital identity, fast payment solutions, and consent-based data sharing.
  • Launching a unified fast payment system (Q1 2026) interoperable across banks and fintechs, supporting QR codes, voice transactions, and offline use.
  • AI-enabled fraud detection tools in development.
  • Financial literacy campaigns in all languages and regions.
  • Youth engagement through competitions, STEAM programs, university partnerships, and a youth simulation lab.
  • Emphasis on trust, affordability, and dignity in the system design.
  • Ripple effect: inclusion strengthens the entire financial ecosystem, stimulates private sector innovation, and enhances regional integration (SADC, Common Monetary Area).
• Key Takeaway: Inclusion is about people, meeting them where they are, listening, and designing systems for their real needs.

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Cambodia: Digital Financial Inclusion via Interoperable Payment Systems

• Context:
  • High remittance costs and fragmented financial services hindered inclusion.
  • Migrant workers faced challenges sending money home, often with funds misused by intermediaries.
• Key Innovations:
  • Bakong Payment System: Launched pilot in 2019, full launch in 2020.
    • Blockchain-based, interoperable payment platform connecting banks, microfinance, payment providers.
    • Enables real-time, peer-to-peer payments.
    • Regulates different financial providers according to their risk profiles to keep costs low.
  • K8 QR Code: Standardized, interoperable QR code for payments across providers, mandatory adoption.
  • Bakong Tourist App: Allows tourists to pay via QR code linked to their credit cards.
  • Government payments and social benefits distributed digitally, especially during COVID-19 lockdown.
  • Promotes local currency use by incentivizing local currency accounts for cross-border payments.
  • Over 34 million accounts reached in a population of 17.5 million; 600 million transactions in 2024 worth $147 billion (3x GDP).
  • Cross-border connectivity with regional countries and major payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, Alipay).
  • Focus on affordability, efficiency, and interoperability to encourage broad adoption.
  • Blockchain technology provides security and trust.
• Strategic Approach:
  • Collaboration with private sector for business flow and pricing.
  • Timely launch during COVID-19 accelerated adoption.
  • Emphasis on interoperability to avoid market silos.
  • Financial inclusion driven by enabling easier account opening and digital transactions, reducing travel/time costs for rural populations.

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Jordan: Digital Financial Transformation and Inclusion

• Context:
  • In 2013, only 24% of adults had financial access; cash dominated transactions.
  • Social norms limited women’s access to banking.
  • Refugees and vulnerable groups were underserved.
• Transformation Strategy:
  • Central Bank-led digital payments transformation (2013-2016) focusing on:
    • Mobile payment system (JoPay) allowing non-bank financial institutions to hold deposits and enable digital wages, benefits, and transactions.
    • Centralized bill presentment and payment system integrating government payments.
  • Infrastructure upgrades:
    • New RTGS system (ISO 20022 compliant).
    • Automated clearing house