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This report contains an initial evaluation of the opportunities for spreading financial services through business networks in local communities across sub-Saharan Africa. The central premise is that small, local business that are able to establish a data-rich, trusted relationship with financial institutions can be effective channels for spreading the benefits of financial services indirectly into the communities that they operate in, through their base of customers, employees and suppliers. This complements traditional financial inclusion approaches, which seek the establishment of direct relationships between end-users and financial institutions.

We can now easily imagine a situation within the next ten years where most people will have a smart phone. We explore new pathways this will open up for extending financial services to the mass of the population who currently are distrustful of financial institutions and dubious of the value that their services can bring to them. The pathways are based on the assumption that smart phones can be used to deliver engaging customer experiences that gives less privileged customers more voice and lets providers form an increasingly granular understanding of these customers. But the pathways reflect a diversity of ways in which they might be included: as individuals about whom providers go out of their way to collect data; as employees and customers of local businesses through or with the support of whom they are able to pluck some relevant financial services; and as active managers of a web of socio-financial relationships that allows them to leverage those that are fortunate enough to have access to formal financial services.

A collection of short notes posted mostly on NextBillion, CGAP, GSMA's MMU, IFMR and World Bank blogs during 2011.