RE: Suggest all WPIG have text on: Goal to advance economic/financial inclusion for unbanked/underbanked and persons with disabilities

Thanks for your input James. And just to give everyone the correct person to
slap, I brought this topic up – Adrian chose to play devil’s advocate –
rightfully so.  

 

My original suggestion was to also include persons with disabilities….”to
advance economic/financial inclusion for the unbanked/underbanked and
persons with disabilities”…and I did that for a reason, after attending last
Wednesday the ADA@25 National Disability Institute (NDI) Anniversary and
Economic Summit. The Chairman of the FDIC, Martin Gruenberg, after reporting
on the outcome of a survey they conducted about how persons with
disabilities interact with financial systems, stated that “Mobile banking is
our focus going forward. Economic inclusion for the unbanked/underbanked and
persons with disabilities is our main focus and priority. We want to partner
with others to help allow these populations to improve access to the banking
system” .

 

My point is if we want to attract banks in particular to our efforts, and
fulfill a  <http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/> Tim Berners-Lee and W3C
goal to allow the web to be available to All, it would behoove us to ensure
that we have clearly identified in all of our documents – including the new
WG charters – that this goal is integral to our vision. The banking industry
in many nations have requirements under these kinds of initiatives. Let help
them meet some of their requirement in this area – and – bring them to our
table to help us build this in.

 

And as Dr Louise Bennett noted that bringing in this next billion is also a
goal of the UN’s  <http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/> Internet Governance
Forum. 

 

While I understand he cynicism including this statement may garner – if we
build the interoperability in right (per Jorge), and we support traditional
and emerging financial services – we can actually help to drive and
influence just that; to advance the cause for the unbanked/underbanked and
persons with disabilities in improving economic/financial inclusion and
self-sufficiency.

 

 

 

* katie *

 

Katie Haritos-Shea 
Senior Accessibility SME (WCAG/Section 508/ADA/AODA)

 

Cell: 703-371-5545 |  <mailto:ryladog@gmail.com> ryladog@gmail.com | Oakton,
VA |  <http://www.linkedin.com/in/katieharitosshea/> LinkedIn Profile |
Office: 703-371-5545

 

From: James Dailey (Modulor) [mailto:James.Dailey@gatesfoundation.org] 
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2015 2:38 PM
To: Katie Haritos-Shea; Stephane Boyera; Adrian Hope-Bailie
Cc: Manu Sporny; Primavera De Filippi; Pindar Wong; Web Payments IG
Subject: RE: Suggest all WPIG have text on: Goal to advance
economic/financial inclusion for unbanked/underbanked

 

I appreciate Adrian raising this issue. 

>From where I stand, the need for organizations to "crowd in" to the vision
of financial inclusion is important. It might not move markets right away
but it can have a cumulative effect on thinking. Part of the effort at the
LevelOneProject.org is to provide a set of principles that we hope
commercial players will react to. A roadmap would be important. 

I also think that the world of mobile money is moving very fast indeed and
while those challenges outlined by Stephanie are clearly there, in
particular the "merchant issue", solutions are emerging. Identity based on
tracked behaviors is starting to become more widely understood if not
accepted. In limited ways today, consumers in these mobile money markets can
pay for plane tickets online, pay the water bill, buy airtime, and merchants
can get inventory financing on the basis of payment histories. The frontier
of what is possible and happening is shifting. 

I understand that closed loop systems like Alipay in China sit on top of
existing openloop ACH-like banking interchange and are primarily "web
based". But they are accessed via mobile. Merchants with web enabled
payments - on mobile devices and with proximity in mind - are a growing
phenomena across the world and we might see a convergence of various models.


I think Web payments should, by their nature, be consistent with Push
payments, Immediate Funds Transfer, OpenLoop, and obviously Standards. A
consistent UI experience is a great way to bootstrap. 

e.g. Can someone in Islamabad buy a dishwasher online using *-pay
(paypal-venmo, facebookpay, alipay, applepay, googlepay, easypaisa, mobipay)
that interfaces with a merchant back end marketplace provider? ( While this
is not financial inclusion - per se - it is the next 2 billion consumers on
the planet. ) Once you have that, what about buying a bag of rice from a
merchant (in proximity) by transferring WhatApp credits to the merchant
web-enabled bank account?  

So, I would argue that financial inclusion is hugely consistent with the
vision that I understood from the web payments group.  I hope that is
helpful input. 

James Dailey 
Senior Associate - Modulor LLC 
----------------------------
LevelOneProject.org Team 
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation



  _____  

From: Katie Haritos-Shea [ryladog@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2015 5:24 AM
To: Stephane Boyera
Cc: Adrian Hope-Bailie; James Dailey (Modulor); Manu Sporny; Primavera De
Filippi; Pindar Wong; Web Payments IG
Subject: Re: Suggest all WPIG have text on: Goal to advance
economic/financial inclusion for unbanked/underbanked

It is imho a kind of chicken and eggs issue: till there is a clear roadmap
related to the topic, the big players would not be onboard, and at the same
time, it is hard to have a clear roadmap without big players on board.

Stephane this was my original point exactly. Let us make this a true goal,
along with accessibility - and at least one of theajor parties (traditional
financial services) may be more likely to come to the table, as they have
obligations in this regard. 

And I happen to feel, as Jorge may too, that mobile brings the promise of
financial inclusion - through one of our other goals - to develop standards
that can also be utilized by new non-traditional financial services (at that
lower monetary value limit) to those who it never have before.

On Jul 27, 2015 6:50 AM, "Stephane Boyera" <stephane@sbc4d.com
<mailto:stephane@sbc4d.com> > wrote:

Hi Adrian

Thank you for launching the discussion. I think it is a very important one
to have.
I cannot agree more about the sentence "financial inclusion of the unbanked
and underbanked" is all marketing and usually looking very suspicious.
I believe that the term "financial inclusion" needs to be deconstructed, and
detailed issues have to be identified. It is very hard to discuss at that
level of abstraction, without identifying current issues that needs to be
addressed.
I personally doubt that identity is the core problem. It would be surely the
case if the future of financial services in developing countries would
follow a similar model as in western countries. I don't think it is the
case, and the explosion of mobile money is another evidences that financial
services would not follow the same path. I think that indeed the future is
on mobile money, but there are today many challenges that prevent the full
exploitation of the platform.
As of now, mobile money is just a mean to transfer money from A to B as
Joerg mentioned. But this is not financial services this is money transfer.
How mobile money could be transformed in financial services is the key
question, that is currently explored by many actors. As of today, in most
countries for most oeprators, mobile money is jsut mobile transfer, with all
accounts almost all the time empty.
There are imho lots of issues, some might be related to this group, some are
clearly not:
*accessibility: how to make mobile services accessible for people who are
illiterate
*Financially literacy: how to make people aware of financial services and
what are benefits etc.
*interoperability: as of today, mobile money services are not interoperable:
users can exchange money with other users on the same system (operators),
and usually in the same country
*Ecosystem: There is not real ecosystem today for mobile money. Users can
pay only a very limited set of services, they can pay at shops (sometimes)
but this is a burden for merchants because there is no receipts, not
connection with accounting software etc.
*connection with the web/ict services : it is very difficult today (and
almost inexistent) to connect mobile money to web sites or mobile services
in few words, mobile money has the potential to become a payment instrument,
but the journey is still full of challenges. On the other hand, the lack of
traditional payment instruments (credit card) is also a great opportunities
for developing countries to leapfrog a generation of payment technologies
(credit card and related elements) and directly develop their electronic
payment ecosystem based on new web-based/mobile-based approach.
I see few opportunities/options for WPIG to pick some specific items to
address (interoperability, ecosystem, etc.) but the major challenge is imho
the absence of the key players. During the workshop in Paris in 2014,
Comviva, one of the biggest mobile money platform provider, made a
presentation, but they didn't join, mostly because there was no real
activity on the topic. In the same way, there is no mobile money providers
(i mean they are companies in the group like some mobile operators who are
offering mobile money services, put nobody from these departments are
onboard) in the group. It is imho a kind of chicken and eggs issue: till
there is a clear roadmap related to the topic, the big players would not be
onboard, and at the same time, it is hard to have a clear roadmap without
big players on board.

Steph


Le 27/07/2015 11:15, Adrian Hope-Bailie a écrit :

Hi all,

This may not be a popular response but I thought someone needed to play
devil's advocate (please note that this is my personal view, although
that should go without saying).

I would love our vision to include a utopian world where we solve world
hunger and end all wars but we need to be cognizant of what is practical
for our group to genuinely influence. It's a personal bugbear of mine
how often companies or groups place themselves under the banner of
"improving financial inclusion" when they have no practical plan to do
anything but wring their hands and talk about the problem.

The "financial inclusion of the unbanked and underbanked" is a
fantastically exploited phrase that everybody loves to bandy about as
something they are trying desperately to solve and I don't want us to be
one of those unless we have some real plans to make a difference. How
will financial inclusion be addressed using the Web and specifically how
will new Web standards be a part of that solution?

The reality is that the majority of the unbanked and underbanked are in
the situation they are in because of issues of identity. The developed
world has decided that you may not have access to banking services if
you can't prove who you are and the less developed world must now play
by those same rules, no matter how practical it is to do so.

The traditional banking system is unable to viably support the bottom
tier of customers because the onboarding cost of an individual by a
traditional bank (KYC etc) will never be recovered, assuming the
potential customer even has the necessary documents or proof to follow a
traditional KYC process. Banks are not charities so offering financial
services to this tier of customer is simply never going to come from the
traditional banking industry. There are almost weekly news releases
about how crypto-currencies will swoop in and resolve this but I'm yet
to see a practical example of how this will be achieved. I suggest that
you challenge anyone that tells you they are trying to address the
problem of the unbanked with the question: "How?". It's easy to say that
it's important, organisations like CGAP have proven it's value beyond
doubt, but it's a lot harder to implement solutions.

At the F2F in NYC it was clear that identity is something the group is
not keen to try and take on right now. We all see it as important but
not important enough to be in scope for our first WG. So that leaves me
wondering, how do we plan on impacting financial inclusion through the
narrow scope of our current WG charter? I assume we agree that we are
not so then I propose it is not mentioned in that charter at all.

In terms of the IG's vision, I'm on the fence. I see indirect benefits
that our work, specifically the Internet of Value CG and Credentials CG
work, will have for financial inclusion eventually but the resounding
apathy with which our group dealt with the Credentials CG's attempts to
charter a WG suggests to me that the IG claiming it genuinely wants to
contribute to improving financial inclusion is a stretch.

As Manu correctly points out there are organisations like the Gates
Foundation that are tackling this issue head on but they are doing so
using simple solutions based on mobile phones and text messages.
Technology will certainly play a major role in solving these problems
over the coming years but the role of "the Web" is unlikely to be a
major one for some time and so I am struggling to see where the W3C, and
this IG, fits in today.

I wholeheartedly support any initiative that will improve financial
inclusion (it has been a passion of mine for many years) and if it's
something people in this group truly believe we can influence then I'm
eager to hear how and make it a part of our vision.

Otherwise, I'm afraid we are at risk of being another group adding to
the noise but with no practical solutions to put forward and that does
more harm than good because it distracts attention away from groups like
the Gates Foundation that are elbows deep in actually solving the problem.

Hoping to be wrong (and climbing off my soapbox),
Adrian


On 27 July 2015 at 04:27, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com
<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com> 
<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com <mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com> >>
wrote:

    On 07/26/2015 02:03 PM, Louise Bennett wrote:
    > One of the major themes of this year's UN IGF is connecting the next
    > billion. I have been inputting to the inter sessional work on this
    > and have described the W3C payments initiative. The draft inputs are
    > now on the web site. Manu are you planning to do anything at the next
    > IGF?

    Unfortunately, I'm spread a bit too thin between the Web Payments and
    Credentials stuff in the technical standardization initiatives and won't
    be able to participate in this years UN Internet Governance Forum.

    Look out for Pindar Wong and Primavera De Filippi, as I think they
    intend to do something related around blockchain at IGF.

    You may also want to link up with James Dailey at the Gates Foundation
    and their work on financial services for the poor.

    I've cc'ed each of these people, please link up offline if you can.

    > Do you want me to push this work as a sub-theme?

    Yes, please, and let us know if this group (or the Credentials Community
    Group) can help in any way.

    -- manu

    --
    Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
    Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
    blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
    https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/





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