Financial inclusion - G20 initiatives and the role of the Bank of Italy

Giorgio Gomel (), Fabio Bernasconi (), Margherita Laura Cartechini (), Veronica Fucile (), Riccardo Settimo and Roberto Staiano ()
Additional contact information
Giorgio Gomel: Banca d'Italia
Fabio Bernasconi: Banca d'Italia
Margherita Laura Cartechini: Banca d'Italia
Veronica Fucile: Banca d'Italia
Roberto Staiano: Banca d'Italia

No 96, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: Financial exclusion concerns 2.5 billion individuals and more than 450 million enterprises. The G20 countries are committed to the reduction of this phenomenon. The Bank of Italy has a fundamental role in the field of financial inclusion, both on a national and an international scale through financial education, banking, markets and payment system supervision, and technical cooperation with other central banks. The Bank has been one of the first institutions to draw public attention to the importance of economic and financial literacy in order to enable consumers to take informed decisions. It has helped the institutions of developing countries to facilitate the financial inclusion of disadvantaged individuals through the development of small intermediaries. Innovative payment instruments can improve financial inclusion. Thanks to a recently introduced reform, the Italian retail payments market can now be accessed by intermediaries combining the provision of payment services and business activities. Mobile-phone operators can now access widely used payment systems by telephone to break into the micro-payment sector which is today dominated by cash transactions. A key role is also played by pre-paid cards.

Keywords: G20; financial inclusion; technical assistance; mutual banks; microfinance; banking supervision; payment systems; financial literacy; consumer protection; school (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G1 G2 G29 I22 O1 O16 P13 P34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2011-0096/QEF_96.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_96_11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().