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The article discusses how the poor are being victimized by digital financial services. Topics covered include role of financial services accessibility in the misuse and theft of personal data, susceptibility to fraud of poor people, according to a report by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, examples of scams targeting the poor and how the implicit sale of data in financial services undermine the privacy of the poor.

The article considers the challenges of persuading poor farmers to buy insurance in Zambia and India. Topics discussed include the poor farmers' access to financial services, on how technology and new ideas can bring insurance to poor people around the world, and the results of a survey which show that mobile phone adoption outpaced both financial inclusion and insurance coverage.

The article focuses on the financial services offered to the poor of developing countries. Financial services for poor people in developing countries--a business known as "microfinance"--have mostly been awful or absent. The poor have been hurt by massive market and regulatory failure. In recent years, at least in some parts of the world, this bleak picture has begun to change, first in credit, then in savings and more recently in remittances. A World Bank report by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Soledad Martinez shows a correlation between lack of financial access and low incomes. A World Bank report by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Soledad Martinez published last month shows a strong correlation between lack of financial access and low incomes. The poor attach great value to having a safe place to keep money and some means of providing for life's risks, either through savings or, better still, through insurance.

The article discusses the efforts to eradicate poverty in the U.S. in relation to the costs that low-income Americans incur while conducting financial transactions with banking and non-bank financial services facilities. According to the article, there is a discrepancy between the costs of money orders issued by banks and U.S. post offices. Bank fees and the process of cashing a pay cheque at a credit union are examined, along with pre-paid debit card and credit card costs.

The article focuses on the calls for post office banking in the U.S. in 2014, which describes the offering of financial services to consumers by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Topics include how post office banking could offset revenue losses caused by the widespread use of electronic mail (e-mail), the number of Americans that are underbanked in 2014, meaning that they lack a bank account, and how post office banking could increase financial services for low-income or distressed Americans.

This article presents information about how microfinancing is using the success of its lending program for poor people to help the same people save. Microfinance institutions such as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh also offers savings accounts to poor customers. The global financial crisis has spurred interest by other microfinance institutions to offer savings accounts.

The article focuses on microcredit in India. A new report from the central bank, the Reserve Bank, argues that microcredit helps the poor and allows banks to increase their business, enhance their profit and spread the risk. Microcredit is already a flourishing business. "Self-Help Groups" (SHGs), supported by banks, bring together women who pool savings for a few months, allocate them to members who need small amounts temporarily, and are then eligible for a bank loan. The finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, has promised to promote microfinance institutions and to help them to act as intermediaries between banks and borrowers. Despite its recent growth, however, microcredit is far less widespread in India than in neighbouring Bangladesh. Most of India's rural poor still do not have access to formal finance, a World Bank study found. Moneylenders are no longer as dominant as they were, but they still play an important role among the very poor. So there is a huge gap. Microcredit is a time-consuming business, where it is hard to achieve a big increase in market size without a commensurate increase in costs. Some see the solution in technology.

The article reports that the United Nations (UN) is focusing its attention on finance for the poor. In the next 12 months the spotlight falls on microfinance, the business of lending small amounts of money to the poor, taking deposits from them, transmitting money on their behalf and insuring them. No good data exist on how many people have access to financial institutions, the breadth and penetration of banks in poor countries, the real cost of a loan and the time it takes to get one, the ease of making a deposit and so forth. There is not even convincing information, beyond lots of anecdotes illustrated by photographs of women in rural villages, about whether microfinance makes any significant contribution to economic growth or is merely another philanthropic fad. The UN would do well to address the common complaint that banks ignore the poor out of class bias. If they do, the UN's interest may hasten change: some financial institutions are already making efforts to work with the poor, either directly or by providing wholesale services to smaller financial institutions.

Discusses the idea of microcredit lending, which are small loans given to poor people to set up or expand business. Details of African communities, which use microcredit organizations; Local problems of microfinance, including diseases in Africa; How organizations have encouraged poor borrowers to form groups to cross-guarantee each other's loans; Success of microcredit.

The article discusses financial services for the poor in the U.S. Topics include the trend of poor people to use non-bank services, services offered to the Latino and immigrant community, and efforts to provide more services such as savings accounts and bank account promotion. Loans from banks such as Grameen Bank, a microfinance institution, and financial housing services such as Boston Community Capital (BCC) are also discussed.

This article looks at banking in South Africa and the effort to incorporate more South Africans into the country's banking system. According to the FinMark Trust, an independent body promoting broader access to financial services, over half of South Africans over the age of sixteen, close to 16 million people, do not have a bank account. The main reason is the lack of regular income, a common affliction in a country where over 40% of people are unemployed. Without a salary slip, it is difficult to gain access to banking services, and fees are hard to bear. Without much money, many see no point in having an account anyway. And it is little help that banks and automatic teller machines (ATMs) are rare in poor areas. South African banks, however, have signed a charter committing themselves to do their bit to redress the inequalities inherited from apartheid.