US Advanced Payments Summit

PRESS RELEASE: For immediate publication

1st September 2010

United Nations: government to person social protection programs are crucial to improve financial inclusion

Over 80% of the world’s population live below the poverty line, surviving on less than $10 a day. Government electronic social cash transfer programs provide monetary incentives to individuals and can help reduce the cycle of poverty.

The most successful cash transfer programs, called conditional cash transfers, come largely from Latin America and have expanded in over 30 countries. For example, in Brazil, an estimated 11 million households receive monthly payments of 30 dollars from the Bolsa Famila program, while in Mexico, there are over 5 million beneficiary households who receive a bimonthly payment of over 100 dollars per pupil based on conditional attendance records and check-ups. The objectives behind such programs are to give the poor an opportunity to participate in the domestic and world economy, improve human capital development and ultimately provide a way out of poverty.

Compared to an active base of 99 million microcredit clients worldwide, CGAP’s report on ‘Leveraging G2P Payments for Financial Inclusion’ states that over 140 million poor people around the world receive regular payments from their governments and less than 25% of beneficiaries receive their benefit into a bank account.

According to Sahba Sobhani at the United Nations Development Programme, “Government initiatives such as social protection programs can create a level of financial services infrastructure that can in fact benefit the poorest citizens by enabling them to save and build assets for a better future. The scaling up of access to financial services for  the poorest  will happen through linkages between public sector institutions providing direct welfare support to the poor and public/ private financial providers (including post banks, MFIs , commercial banks etc.) and leverage agents operating in the  informal sector  (i.e local retail agents selling mobile banking products or correspondent agents)”.

Join Sahba Sobhani, Program Manager, Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative, UNDP and Sarah Rotman, Associate Microfinance Analyst, CGAP at the world’s first ever G2P Conference and Expo, taking place October 12-14 in Washington D.C.

Some highlights from the show include:

• US Treasury’s successful launch and roll out of their prepaid card programme and future plans to add more applications such as pension contributions to the card
• Red Cross’s strategy for a more efficient, effective and less costly method of financial aid  distribution
• World Bank’s drive to help governments form the business models to deliver smart card programmes and ID systems to ensure secure transfer of funds
• Solidaridad’s ‘conditional cash transfer programme and how it’s improved financial literacy
• Roshan’s deployment of a G2P mobile payments service to mitigate fraud and corruption
• Caixa Economica Federal’s roll out of an extensive branchless banking network to distribute G2P Payments to the underbanked and underserved

For full information on the event agenda, speakers, sponsors and workshop please download the brochure at:
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The event website: www.g2ppayments.com

For more information on media accreditation or to organise interviews with speakers, please contact:

Conference Director: Sonum Puri   
Email: sonumpuri@clarionevents.com
Phone: +44 (0)20 7067 1846

Event dates and location:
12*-14 October 2010 at Marriott Hotel, Tysons Grove, Virginia, USA.

*12 October is a pre-conference workshop day.