JazzCash, Pakistan’s digital financial service provider, and Women’s World Banking, a global non-profit organization, have announced a partnership to promote women’s financial inclusion across Pakistan.
Women’s World Banking is the global nonprofit devoted to giving low-income women access to the financial tools and resources they require to build security and prosperity. The organization conducts market research to learn what financial products and information low-income women need, and develop innovative, practical ways for institutions to do business with women.
JazzCash and Women World Banking, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will work to increase low-income women’s adoption and use of digital financial services, particularly the JazzCash mobile account. With this initiative, working women will be able to open their bank accounts through mobile without wasting their time in long queues. Aniqa Afzal Sandhu, Chief Digital and Financial Services Officer of Jazz, said,
“We are delighted to partner with Women’s World Banking, as they have done pioneering work on empowering women financially in other markets. We look forward to the research findings as they will enable JazzCash to increase financial inclusion of the marginalized and disenfranchised women across Pakistan.”
The project will engage Ideas 42, a non-profit organization that uses behavioral science to help solve social problems. Together, they will leverage the best global practices to serve the low-income women and empower them through financial inclusion. The project will not only build an understanding of how digital financial services work for low-income women in Pakistan but will also help with similar initiatives to reach unbanked women regionally and globally. Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, said,
“We commend JazzCash for seeing women’s longstanding financial exclusion as we always have: an opportunity rather than an obstacle. With a mobile savings tool like JazzCash, a woman, who may not have otherwise had access, can open a bank account in her own name without taking time away from her busy day. She can plan for her future, build a safety net for times of crisis, and even grow her business.”
JazzCash, a digital financial service provider under Jazz’s ecosystem, has thousands of retail outlets in Pakistan. JazzCash recently announced that its monthly active mobile account customers have crossed the 2 million mark. Earlier this year, JazzCash revealed that more than 100 million financial transactions were made during the year 2016 through its Mobile Accounts, up 4 times as compared to 2015.
