Financial Inclusion provides the unbanked and underbanked with the opportunity to break the vicious cycle of poverty by giving them access to tools that allow them to securely pay, save, borrow, and insulate themselves from financial shocks. Mastercard looks at Financial Inclusion holistically and believes that merchant acceptance is a critical and often overlooked component of driving financial inclusion. SMB (Small and Micro Business) acceptance provides an on-ramp to financial inclusion by providing the electronic acceptance footprint necessary to drive usage, enhancing the utility of electronic payments and thereby, drive their adoption, resulting in the formation of digital liquidity.

Mastercard recently released a report, Building Electronic Payment Acceptance at the Base of the Pyramid to Advance Financial Inclusion, where several barriers to advancing merchant acceptance of digital payments by SMBs were identified as well as effective ways to address these barriers.

Invited experts will provide their feedback on the key findings of the report and their views on advancing thinking and collaboration on the critical role of merchant acceptance in developing digital financial services ecosystems. Participants will include Financial Inclusion leaders representing business, international organizations, government, NGOs, Fintech, academics, and others.

Key Objectives

• Bring stakeholders together to discuss findings of report, building on the report’s insights and identifying how these insights can be driven to action;
• Develop a common understanding of what we know about DFS ecosystems, advancing our mutual understanding of ecosystem gaps and the opportunities to address these gaps;
• Advance collaboration between the public and private sectors on the critical issue of merchant acceptance by identifying what needs to be done, areas of more concreate collaboration, and the creation of mechanisms for driving collaboration;
• Spark an ongoing dialogue that advances our critical thinking on this topic and incorporate findings as learnings.

Agenda

• Opening Remarks: Sami Lahoud, Senior VP, Acceptance Strategy and Engagement, Mastercard
• Scene Setting/Context: Matt Gamser, CEO, SME Finance Forum, International Finance Corporation
• Presentation of the Report: Dan Salazar, VP, Acceptance Strategy and Engagement, Mastercard
  • Moderated Discussion o Moderator: Hemant Baijal, VP, Global Policy Affairs
  • Role of PPPs: Ahmed Faragallah, Senior Payment Systems Specialist, World Bank
  • Additional discussants to be confirmed.
• Open Moderated Discussion and Next Steps: All

RSVP by February 16 to daniel.schwartz@mastercard.com.