Impatient Optimists
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Topics / Financial Services for the Poor

Fewer than 10 percent of the world's poor have access to safe, affordable financial services. We are working with a wide range of public and private partners to help make microfinance—particularly savings accounts—widely accessible to poor people throughout the developing world.

Learn more below and visit the program page for more details about our work in this area.

A New Framework for Digital Money Innovation

March 20, 2013 / Mireya Almazan, Lynn Eisenhart, Megan Oxman

We’re writing today to share this framework with others - both those from the non-profit community as well as those working in the broader arena of technology and financial services – and to stimulate creative thinking about how innovative technology and business models could help deliver financial services to lower-income geographies. We believe there is a lot to learn, and we invite readers to join us on this exciting new journey.

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Celebrate Solutions: Improving Literacy and Driving Change Through SMS Text Messaging

March 20, 2013 / Rati Bishnoi

Using cell phones and text-message based literacy and numeracy training is helping Senegalese girls and women dramatically improve their ability to communicate with each other and their communities, according to an evaluation of a pilot program by Dakar, Senegal-based NGO Tostan.

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A Digital Pathway to Financial Inclusion

January 14, 2013 / Daniel Radcliffe, Rodger Voorhies

In a new paper entitled “A Digital Pathway to Financial Inclusion,” we present a growing body of evidence which indicates that connecting poor people to a digital financial system will generate sizable welfare benefits. We also argue that countries will not bridge the cash-digital divide in one giant leap. Instead, countries will pass through several stages of market development along the path to an inclusive digital economy.

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What You Didn't Know About Financial Services and The People Who Use Them

January 08, 2013 / Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Leora Klapper

The World Bank's Development Research Group Global Findex is a gold mine of data about how people around the world save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk in their day-to-day lives.

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Photo of the Day: Women Make Their Voices Heard

November 06, 2012 / Gates Foundation

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  • "Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward." —Melinda Gates

  • The Global Fund has helped to deliver more than 190 million bed nets to protect families from malaria.

  • "The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively small amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families." —Bill Gates, 2012 Annual Letter

  • "When it come to global health, Bill and I are optimists—but we're impatient optimists. Tremendous progress is being made. But there is still so much we're impatient to see done." —Melinda French Gates

  • In Senegal, 80% of households now have a bed net, helping the number of malaria cases there drop 50% in a single year.

©2013 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation