Last Mile Money: 2021 Year-In-Review
Co-authored by Kanika Kumar, Becca Carroll, John Won, Tolu Odusanya
Last Mile Money is a global innovation portfolio by IDEO and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focused on connecting underserved communities to the digital economy. We prototype, pilot, and invest in inclusive digital financial services alongside a global network of businesses, philanthropies, and governments. 2021 marked our 3rd year of operations and our most impactful one yet!
2021 by the numbers:
- 👋🏽 Partnered with 15 organizations
- 📱 Built 24 prototypes with our partners
- 🛫 Ran 11 pilots in 8 countries
- 🌍 Doubled our internal team size and brought in 30 IDEO and IDEO.org designers for research, prototyping, and pilot projects
Our top 3 highlights from 2021:
1. Supercharging 8 inclusive FinTech startups through our inaugural Last Mile Money Accelerator
We ran a 4-month accelerator program and provided capital and design support to 8 inclusive FinTech startups across 7 countries (out of 238 total applicants).
Launching a savings and investment product for underserved customers: With Mool, a neobank in India, we designed a savings and investment offering for low income, rural customers. Mool is piloting the savings and investment account to build financial resilience among 50,000 dairy farmers in Jharkhand, India. Read more about our work with Mool here.
Digitizing commerce for women in low income locales: With PesaKit, we designed Furushi, a discounted bulk-shopping experience for women in rural and urban low-income areas. Pesakit is piloting the bulk e-commerce service in Kenya. Read more about the work with Pesakit here.
Converting delivery drivers into mobile money agents: With Boost, we built a roving-agent model in partnership with Fidelity Bank to convert delivery drivers into mobile money agents who serve merchant retailers with cash-conversion service in Ghana. Boost is piloting the roving-agent service in Ghana with Fidelity Bank.
2. Helping Unilever micro-merchants grow their businesses across Kenya, India, and Pakistan
We partnered with Unilever on a year-long program to digitize merchant operations in India, Kenya, and Pakistan. Through our work, more than 100,000 micro-merchants have been able to leverage the benefits of digital commerce and finance.
Digital Credit on Finja (Pakistan): We launched a redesigned Islamic-compliant digital credit and repayment solution that allows merchants to buy stock on credit. We partnered with Finja, a FinTech platform, to connect Unilever merchants to digital loans. The Finja inventory credit product has launched and will reach 30,000+ Unilever merchants over the next six months.
ZyadaShop (India): We digitized merchant storefronts with Mosambee to help micro-merchants effectively compete with the rising competition among e-grocers. The app, ZyadaShop, was recognized as a rising star in the Google Play store, is currently piloting in 6 cities, and has been launched nationally.
Smart Shakti (India): We designed an app to enable over 100,000 rural women merchants to confidently order and pay their distributors digitally. Many of the elements we prototyped together are now being layered into Shikhar (Hindustan Unilever’s online ordering platform), reaching all Unilever Indian merchants who order digitally.
JazaDuka (Kenya): Jaza Duka is an interest free line of digital credit for merchants. We designed a communications plan and delivered content through whatsapp to improve merchants financial literacy and encourage adoption. Together with Unilever, Mastercard and KCB, we also created a new smartphone-based app experience as a future direction for the JazaDuka product.
Read more about our year-long partnership with Unilever here.
3. Reimagining remittances to help migrant workers send money home digitally
Globally, nearly $1 trillion is sent between borders as a remittance — sending a paycheck home to friends or family. For a migrant worker who is a new internet user, the experience of remitting money is often associated with high fees. We partnered with NOW Money, a fast growing UAE neobank serving new-to-banking users, to design a better digital banking experience around money transfers. Our designs led to a 400% increase in remittance engagement rate among NOW Money users in the UAE.
Read more about our work with NOW Money here.
Come build with us. If you are interested in the problems of last-mile financial inclusion and helping micro-merchants grow, we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at LastMileMoney@ideo.com.
