July 2019

The financial inclusion balancing act

Libra, the wildly ambitious and probably doomed Facebook-backed cryptocurrency, is innovative in many different ways. But there's one part of it that's deeply familiar — the way in which it sells itself as a way of bringing millions of people into the global financial system.The big question: Can the private sector, and technology companies in particular, bring critical financial services to those who have been excluded from the global financial system?Most fintech startups espouse two lofty goals: disrupting the banks and serving...