Digital Financial Services Roadmap to Enhance Financial Inclusion
This report focuses on the readiness of the Palestinian population for digital financial services (DFS). It must be read in conjunction with the following reports, also produced as part of the survey on financial inclusion in Palestine:
- Summary Report: Financial Inclusion Diagnostic Study
- A Step Forward: Financial Inclusion from a Gender Perspective in Palestine – Gender Policy Report
This report is concerned with understanding the readiness of the individual Palestinian citizen to embrace DFS as a way for enhancing financial inclusion, and to assess the readiness of financial institutions, on the supply side, to be able to deliver DFS that can help them reach previously underserved segments of the population.
Divided into two parts, the first part of this report provides an in-depth analysis of the supply and demand survey undertaken by the PMA and PCMA, in conjunction with MAS. The second part focuses on developing a roadmap for strengthening DFS for the promotion of financial inclusion in Palestine. The surveys, conducted in 2022, are updated versions of a similar survey undertaken in 2016. The 2016 survey led to the development of a National Financial Inclusion Strategy, with the mission to increase financial inclusion from around 36% to (more than) 50% by 2025. The 2022 survey highlights progress made, and more importantly, it factors in new
measures of financial inclusion, such as e-wallets (instead of bank accounts), and other digital financial services and products (DFSP) that drive digital financial inclusion (DFI).
Unearthed gaps are translated into an actionable roadmap, proposed to address the problem of financial exclusion in Palestine.