A bolder ambition for a maturing sector: we are becoming GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance

The mobile money sector has evolved rapidly over the last decade and our focus has evolved alongside it. The challenge has shifted from expanding access to financial services to ensuring those services meaningfully improve people’s financial lives. That’s why we’re relaunching as the GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance programme — to reframe the conversation from access alone, to meaningful usage and from financial inclusion to financial health.

Access is the beginning, not the end

In 2011, only 42% of adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) had a formal financial account. Fast forward to 2024, that figure had nearly doubled to 75%, driven largely by mobile money. And yet, an uncomfortable reality persists: today, around 2.3 billion people in LMICs hold a mobile money account, but only about one in four actively use it.  

The lesson from the past decade is clear: access alone does not automatically translate into meaningful usage that fosters resilience, boosts confidence and improves financial wellbeing. Access lays the foundation, but real impact comes from the ability to save a little each month, to weather an unexpected event, to send money home safely, to invest in a small business. Across markets, digital financial service providers are expanding their offerings and are increasingly leveraging emerging technologies — notably artificial intelligence — to address dimensions of financial health. As the sector matures, the global conversation is moving in that direction and so are we.

Reflecting on our journey towards meaningful usage

The GSMA’s Mobile Money programme has spent the past decade supporting mobile money providers to innovate, grow and adapt to the needs of users — particularly the most vulnerable. We helped build the enabling environment needed for the sector to grow responsibly, promoted excellence in the provision of mobile money services and generated the knowledge, standards, data and best practices that have shaped the sector worldwide.

Supporting deeper and more meaningful usage, whether through initiatives on financial literacy, women’s financial resilience, or the digitisation of small businesses, has long been central to what we do. We are now making that mission explicit. 

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“Over the past decade, our work has helped demonstrate the transformative power of mobile money in expanding financial inclusion, binging millions of unbanked people into the formal financial system. Throughout that journey, our work has increasingly focused not just on access, but on driving deeper usage and better outcomes. Our new brand and strategy make that evolution explicit — building on the foundations of inclusion while placing greater emphasis on financial health outcomes.“

– Ashley Olson Onyango, Head of GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance Programme

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Introducing the GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance programme

Today, we are relaunching as the GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance programme. Our mission is to drive an inclusive digital finance ecosystem by mobilising providers, policymakers and partners to deliver market innovation and reform — closing the gap between financial access and genuine financial health for underserved populations.  

By financial health, we mean the ability to manage daily finances, meet future obligations, maintain resilience to shocks, pursue financial goals and feel confident about one’s financial future. We recognise that access remains essential, but largely insufficient on its own to contribute to more stable, equitable and prosperous societies. 

The key dimensions of financial health

What to expect from us

We will continue to build on our core strengths — generating evidence and insights, shaping enabling environments and supporting responsible growth and innovation in digital finance — but with a more intentional financial health lens applied across all of it. We aspire to equip the sector with the tools to measure financial health, moving beyond access and usage metrics toward evidence of meaningful financial outcomes for users. Central to this is ensuring that measurement serves a clear objective: enabling digital financial service providers to improve data-backed decision making that directly advances the financial health of the people they serve. 

The mobile money sector has experienced rapid scale in the last decade. The next chapter for the GSMA Inclusive Digital Finance programme is to make that scale matter. Better financial health for millions is within reach. Subscribe to the Inclusive Digital Finance newsletter and be part of what comes next.