There is a growing body of evidence showing that greater financial inclusion presents opportunities for everyone, with positive effects on economic growth, financial stability and social cohesion. Even so, around 2.5 billion adults — over half of the world’s adult population — still lack access to formal financial services. About 90 percent of these unbanked people live in developing countries.

Many of the smartest and most innovative policies for increasing access to formal financial services have come from developing countries — those living with the challenges of financial inclusion every day. As demonstrated by mobile money transfer and payment services in Kenya and the Philippines; the use of third-party retail outlets to offer banking services in Brazil; and the accomplishments of Indonesia and Thailand in reforming state banks, developing countries hold the solutions to unleash the power of financial inclusion. Peer-to-peer learning will help spread these innovations more widely and enable others to scale up successful policy solutions to expand financial access.