Podcast: A MasterCard Plan for Financial Inclusion
In this interview with the Business of Giving, Shamina Singh, president of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, discusses how the credit-card company is utilizing resources and expertise from across its operations to address income inequality "through the lens of financial inclusion."
Two billion people worldwide are locked out of the financial system — no bank accounts, no credit, no access to loans and other financial instruments — severely restricting their economic potential. Nearly two billion more are intermittently cut off.
As Ms. Singh details, the center is deploying MasterCard’s technology, data, and networking capabilities, and its familiar brand, to plug 500 million more people and 40 million small businesses into the global financial grid by 2020 — not just connecting buyers, sellers, and banks but providing a digital system for humanitarian aid to be supplied to refugees and other vulnerable populations. . .