Affordable, accessible and appropriate remittances. Full financial services that work for women and men on the move.
UNCDF is pursuing an ambitious, 360-degree approach to making remittances work better for migrants and their families.
The situation
Globally, an estimated 281 million people, or roughly four percent of the world’s population, live and work outside their country of origin. Half of them are women. Like everyone else, migrants need a full suite of safe, affordable, convenient and effective financial services. But as new technologies emerge, a disconnect has grown between the available financial services and the needs and aspirations of migrant populations. It starts with remittances—ways to send money home to the people who depend on them. But it doesn’t end there.
Our response
UNCDF wants to make it easier, safer and less expensive for migrants to send money home. But beyond that, we want to take advantage of remittances as the starter product that could open the door to other high-impact financial services—credit, bill payments, savings, pensions, insurance, and more—to build the resilience of migrants and their families.
New thinking, approaches and knowledge are needed to reimagine remittances and make them work for men and women on the move. Through an inclusive way of doing innovation—one that is gender-smart and migrant centric—UNCDF is working at every level: with international and regional organizations, with national governments, with financial service providers, and with migrants themselves.
Supporting governments
Making digital finance work for migrants
STRENGTHENING FinancIAL resilience
Building awareness and advocacy
We come from the worlds of banking and technology. International development. Policy and regulation. We have worked in more than 50 countries and speak more than 20 different languages. Our team spans 9 time zones and more than 90 percent of us are migrants ourselves.
