The Business Case for Linkage With Informal Savings

This note tells the story of how OPM took the Mastercard Foundation’s partnership approach to the Savings at the Frontier (SatF) program and expanded it to work with ten formal providers across the three countries, testing a mix of banking, microfinance, and fintech models.

This note summarizes practices and lessons learned from the SatF program on providing funding and technical assistance to financial service providers (FSPs). It analyzes the emerging business case for linkage and the program partners’ experience in delivering solutions to informal savings mechanisms (ISMs) and their users. The target audience for this not is the private sector practitioners and donors who are interested in designing commercially sustainable approaches and solutions for serving informal savers. It also includes three case studies showcasing the experience of some of SatF's partner FSPs in more detail.