Small businesses and AI: Accelerating innovation and inclusion

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Highly confident, women entrepreneurs still face systemic barriers

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How data and AI can drive change: 4 ways forward

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Unlocking the power of small businesses to drive climate-smart inclusive growth

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Digital platforms have a unique opportunity to support workers and entrepreneurs by leveraging behavioral sciences and designing products and services to enhance financial resilience.

Digital platform use is on the rise across the Latin America, providing a source of income for millions of people. However, many gig workers and entrepreneurs in the region remain disconnected from social protection benefits like paid time off, sick leave, health insurance, and retirement savings that could help strengthen their financial security. To address this challenge, the Center joined forces with the Common Cents Lab, a behavioral science research lab, to design, implement, and test behaviorally informed interventions aimed at helping independent workers and entrepreneurs increase their earnings, obtain credit and save for unforeseen circumstances. We collaborated with nine digital platforms and fintech companies, including Mastercard partners Mercado Libre and Gliber, to conduct six field studies. Through careful research and deep understanding of users’ behaviors, these platforms designed and re-designed features to tailor and refine their services to better meet user needs. The findings point to a future where digital platforms not only thrive in their business endeavors but also contribute significantly to building a more financially resilient society. https://www.mastercard.com/news/insights/center-for-inclusive-growth-common-cents-lab/

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KEY TAKEAWAYSInnovative partnerships connecting behavioral science experts with digital platforms and global development organizations offer a promising avenue for advancing inclusive growth at scale.

Behavioral interventions can be more effective than financial education.While traditional approaches to financial education have had mixed results , embedding behavioral science approaches into digital platforms offers an alternative, evidence-based approach to boosting financial health and resilience of individuals using digital platforms with cost-effective, scalable interventions.Investing in user financial resilience is a win-win decision.The engagement between researchers and product teams helped build internal muscle and expertise around embedding behavioral approaches in digital environments and product design processes. The findings also bolster the business case for digital platforms to adopting these approaches. For example, reminding sellers to stock up during busy times could increase e-commerce sales. For fintech lenders, offering flexible credit payment dates could boost repayment rates for small businesses borrowers, while also helping them smooth income volatility.Multinational companies can tap into their networks to build a more inclusive digital economyFor this partnership, the Center combined philanthropic support for research organizations and connections with Mastercard business partners to design and test sustainable, scalable evidence-based interventions that enhance financial resilience in the region. By cultivating diverse cross-sector partnerships with like-minded companies, these lessons and case studies help to inspire others to replicate and continue to innovate upon these social impact models..

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Israel Burgos

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These targeted interventions have already marked a significant milestone by reaching 180,000 users and directly influencing the behaviors of 1,000 of them, putting them on track to improve their financial resilience. This is just the beginning.As part of our efforts, we are also working to develop an interactive tool that will allow digital platforms and fintechs to diagnose what their behavioral challenges are and replicate successful interventions already implemented to strengthen their product offering.

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David del Ser: fueling climate resilience with fintech solutions

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Toward a more stable tomorrow

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BSR's HERproject® is now RISE: Reimagining Industry to Support Equality, an initiative to support collaborative industry action at scale to advance gender equality in global garment, footwear and home textiles supply chains.RISE brings together the four largest women’s empowerment programs in the apparel industry—from&nbsp;BSR’s HERproject,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gapinc.com/en-us/values/sustainability/empowering-women/p-a-c-e-and-empower@work" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gap Inc. P.A.C.E</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.care.org/work/womens-empowerment/dignified-work" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CARE International</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://betterwork.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Better Work</a>—to build from proven approaches, scale impact and improve efficiency.This unified approach makes it easier and more efficient for industry and wider stakeholders to drive accelerated and lasting impact on gender equality.

RISE

BSR's HERproject® is now RISE: Reimagining Industry to Support Equality, an initiative to support collaborative industry action at scale to advance gender equality in global garment, footwear and home textiles supply chains.

Tapping into digital partnerships to build financial resilience