数字技术让没有银行账户的人拥有了账户 | 盖茨笔记

In the worst days of COVID-19, when people around the world were out of work and struggling to pay for food and housing, many national governments came to the same conclusion about the best way to offer immediate help: send people cash. More than 200 countries introduced emergency cash transfer programs or expanded existing ones; India, for example, transferred money to 300 million people, 200 million of whom were women, in the weeks after its first lockdown. Brazil reached 70 million people with emergency transfers.

在新冠疫情下最糟糕的日子里，当世界各地的人们失去了工作，艰难地负担着食物和住房费用时，许多国家的政府对提供及时帮助的最佳方式达成了共识：向人们发放现金。200多个国家推出了紧急现金支付计划，或是扩展了现有计划：例如，印度在首次封控后的几周内，向3亿人支付了现金，其中2亿为女性；巴西向7000万人提供了紧急现金支付。

Imagine the risk involved in making these payments with paper money during a pandemic. Government workers would have to physically deliver these payments, potentially exposing them and everyone they encountered to the virus. In addition, the whole process would be expensive and time-consuming at a time when people need help as quickly as possible.

但是，想象一下在大流行期间用纸币进行支付所涉及的风险。政府工作人员将不得不亲自交付这些款项，而这可能使他们和他们遇到的每个人接触到病毒。此外，在人们需要尽快得到帮助的时候，纸币交付的整个过程成本很高也很耗时。

Fortunately, most governments didn’t have to resort to in-person payment. They were able to deposit cash transfers directly into people’s accounts—allowing them to give crucial support without paper bills changing hands. And during the pandemic, even more users were brought into the digital fold. For example, after financial regulators in West Africa temporarily allowed people to open accounts by text or telephone, more than 8 million signed up for accounts while their countries were in lockdown.

幸运的是，大多数政府不必采取面对面的交付方式。他们能够将现金直接存入人们的账户——这使得他们能够在不经手纸币的情况下提供关键支持。在新冠大流行期间，更多的用户被带入了数字支付领域。例如，在西非的金融监管机构暂时允许人们通过短信或电话开立账户后，超过800万人在其国家封控期间注册了账户。

Globally, transferring so much money without cash was possible thanks to more than a decade of painstaking work by governments, financial service providers, nonprofits, and other partners. Today, about three quarters of people worldwide have an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider. That’s a 50 percent increase in the past ten years, and the growth has not just been in higher-income countries. Developing countries have increased 71 percent in that time.

全球范围内，得益于政府、金融服务提供商、非营利组织和其他合作伙伴十多年来的艰苦努力，进行如此巨额的非现金支付成为了一件可行的事。如今全世界约四分之三的人群已在金融机构或通过移动支付供应商开立了账户。在过去十年里，这一数字增长了50%。而这一增长不仅仅发生在高收入国家，发展中国家的同期数字增长也达到了71%。

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This growth is great news because it means that more low-income people—and especially low-income women—are being empowered to use products that let them make and receive payments, save and borrow money, and get insurance. Both research and experience show that this financial inclusion helps people exit and stay out of poverty. And using digital technology to do it is a low-cost way to build economic resilience and reduce extreme poverty, which is why it’s an essential part of the Gates Foundation’s strategy. We have granted several hundred million dollars to partners who are helping low- and middle-income countries build digital financial systems.

这一增长是个好消息，因为这意味着更多的低收入人群（尤其是低收入女性）得以使用产品来进行支付、收款、储蓄、借贷以及参保等金融活动。研究和经验都表明，普惠金融有助于人们脱贫且不返贫。利用数字技术来实现这一目标是建立经济弹性和减少极端贫困的一种低成本方式，因此，这成为了盖茨基金会战略的一个重要组成部分。我们已经向那些正在帮助中低收入国家建设数字金融系统的合作伙伴提供了数亿美元的资助。

Whenever I talk to friends about this work, they’re surprised to learn that roughly 1.4 billion adults can’t or don’t use any type of formal financial account, and most of those unbanked people live in low- and middle-income countries. One reason is that analog banking requires buildings, piles of paperwork, security guards, and tellers, making the cost per transaction so high that it’s not economical for a company to serve people with low balances and small transactions. As a result, people create ingenious informal banking methods—doing things like pooling cash with family and neighbors or creating community savings groups. As creative as these solutions are, they don’t allow people to build assets or move money instantly. And they are often risky—cash stashed under a mattress can be stolen, for example.

每当我与朋友谈及这项工作，他们都会惊讶地发现，约有14亿成年人不能或不使用任何形式的正规的金融账户，而这些没有银行账户的人大多生活在中低收入国家。其中一个原因是，类似的银行业务需要在室内进行、填写成堆的纸质材料、以及保安和出纳员的支持，这使得每笔交易的成本非常高，以至于公司为办理低余额和小额交易的人群服务并不划算。因此，人们创造了巧妙的非正规银行业务办理方法——比如与家人和邻居集中管理现金，或者创建社区储蓄小组。尽管这些解决方案很有创意，但它们却并不支持人们建立资产或即时转移资金。而这些方案往往伴随着风险——例如，藏在床垫下的现金可能会被偷。

Today, the proliferation of mobile phones means that you no longer need so much expensive infrastructure to provide modern financial services. With digital technology, costs are low enough that it makes economic sense for companies to serve more of the people whom the old system has ignored.

如今，移动电话的普及意味着你不再需要那么多昂贵的基础设施来提供现代金融服务。数字技术让成本变得足够低，因此，公司为更多被旧金融系统排除在外的人群提供服务具备了经济上的可行性。

An early example was M-PESA in Kenya, which let people living in cities send money to their relatives in rural areas efficiently and inexpensively. As it caught on, it was eventually used to make payments in shops. Likewise, India’s Universal Payment Interface allows users to make instant digital payments to each other at extremely low cost; it now includes 323 financial service providers throughout the country and handles nearly 6 billion transactions each month. During the pandemic, more than 80 million adults in India made their first digital payment to a merchant.

一个早期的例子是肯尼亚的移动支付产品M-PESA，它让生活在城市里的人能够高效且低成本地给他们在农村地区的亲戚汇款。M-PESA逐渐流行开来，最终被用于在商店付款。同样，印度统一支付接口（UPI）允许用户以极低的成本进行即时数字支付；UPI现已在印度拥有323家金融服务提供商，每月处理近60亿笔交易。在新冠大流行期间，印度有超过8000万成年人首次向商家进行了数字支付。

Yet even the exemplar countries aren’t reaching everyone who needs digital banking. That’s why the World Bank (with support from the foundation) runs the Global Findex database, a comprehensive survey of how adults borrow, save, and send money and manage risks. The Findex has been updated periodically since 2011, and the latest version was just published earlier today. Using data gathered from 128,000 adults in 123 economies, it highlights steps that will expand formal banking to everyone in the world who wants it.

然而，即使是示范国家也没有惠及所有需要数字银行服务的人。这就是为什么世界银行（在盖茨基金会的支持下）运行了全球金融包容性指数（Findex）数据库，这是一项关于成年人如何借贷、储蓄、汇款和管理风险的全面调查。自2011年以来，该数据库一直在定期更新，其最新版本刚于6月29日发布。该报告使用了来自123个经济体的12.8万名成年人的数据，突出强调了让正规银行业务惠及世界上每一位有需求的人所要采取的步骤。

I eagerly read an early copy of the Findex report as soon as I had the chance, and I’m glad I did. I recommend the report to anyone, especially policymakers, who wants more people to benefit from financial inclusion. When the world knows more about where inclusion is growing and where it isn’t, we’re better equipped to make sure we’re reaching the people who are still left out.  

我一有机会就迫不及待地阅读了Findex报告的早期版本，我很高兴我这样做了。我推荐所有希望更多人受益于普惠金融的人，尤其是政策制定者阅读这份报告。在世界更多地了解包容性的增长点后，我们就能更好地完善金融系统，确保惠及那些仍被排除在外的人。

One Findex finding that jumped out to me is the gender gap. Although the world has made progress in empowering women to use formal financial services as much as men do, there’s still work to do. In developing countries, the gap was 9 percent in 2017 and 6 percent in 2021. The world can do better. Leaders should focus even more directly on expanding account ownership and use among women.

Findex的一项发现引起了我的注意，那就是性别鸿沟。尽管世界已更好地赋权女性，让她们和男性一样使用正规金融服务，但仍有许多工作要做。在发展中国家，2017年和2021年男女使用正规金融服务的比率差别分别为9%和6%。世界可以做得更好。领导者应更直接地着眼于扩大女性拥有和使用银行账户的权利。

Another section of the report looks at a crucial question: What prevents the people who are still unbanked from joining the formal system? Knowing the answer will make it easier to create services that will work for them.

报告的另一部分探讨了一个至关重要的问题：是什么阻止了那些仍然没有银行账户的人加入正规系统？知道了这个答案，才能更容易地为他们创建有效的服务。

To find out, the researchers behind the Findex did extensive surveys of the unbanked. Their top explanations: The accounts are still too expensive, a family member already has one, banks are too far away, or they don’t have enough money to use an account. So making the accounts even more affordable, accessible, and appealing needs to be a priority. Introducing digital payments via mobile phones is a great way to start: Between 2014 and 2021, the percentage of people in Ghana using formal banking services went up 28 points, and virtually all of the increase was driven by people signing up for mobile-enabled digital payments.

为了找到答案，Findex背后的研究人员对无银行账户人群进行了广泛调查。这些人的主要理由有：帐户对他们而言还是太贵；家庭成员已经有一个账户了；银行太远；或者他们没有足够的钱去使用账户。因此，当务之急是让账户变得更实惠、更易获得且更有吸引力。通过移动电话引入数字支付是一个很好的起点：2014年至2021年间，加纳使用正规银行服务的人口比例上升了28个百分点，而几乎所有的增长都源于那些注册使用移动数字支付的人。

I’ve heard people argue that there’s a simple way to automatically expand financial inclusion: introduce digital currencies, and specifically cryptocurrencies. But that idea isn’t rooted in an understanding of what poor people require—the kind of understanding that the Findex provides.

我曾经听到过有人提出，有一种简单的方法可以自动扩大普惠金融：引入数字货币，特别是加密货币。但这种想法并不是基于对穷困人口的需求的理解——如Findex提供的那种理解。

In many areas where the unbanked live, many transactions are still done in cash, so even people with digital accounts need the ability to convert digital money into paper money quickly, and vice versa. But today, that’s extremely difficult to do with cryptocurrencies, particularly in rural areas. In addition, cryptocurrencies don’t solve the problem of identification; buyers and sellers would still need to be able to prove they are who they say they are.

在很多没有银行账户的人生活的地区，许多交易仍然是用现金完成的，所以即使是拥有数字账户的人也需要有能力将数字货币快速转换成纸币，反之亦然。但如今，用加密货币做到这一点极其困难，尤其是在农村地区。此外，加密货币并不能解决身份识别的问题；买家和卖家仍然需要能够自证其身份。

When it comes to financial inclusion, the most important thing is to consider what poor people require. That means creating secure financial systems that identify who is making transactions, and that are interoperable, so that a person using one system can make transactions with someone on another system. It also means updating regulations so they protect consumers while encouraging innovation.

谈到普惠金融，最重要的是要考虑贫困人口的需求。这意味着建立一套安全的金融系统，从而识别进行交易的对象。此系统还应具备交互操作性，如此，使用一个系统的人可以与另一个系统的人进行交易。这也意味着要更新法规，使其在保护消费者的同时鼓励创新。

I’m excited about the great progress that’s documented in this year’s Findex. More people around the world, including more women and low-income people, have and use bank accounts than ever before. A lot of people are still excluded, but we have a roadmap that is feasible without billions of dollars of extra money to build systems that empower them. By following the roadmap, we can help them lift themselves out of poverty and make the world a fairer place.

我对今年Findex报告中记录的巨大进步感到兴奋。世界各地拥有和使用银行账户的人比以往任何时候都要多，其中包括更多的女性和低收入人群。尽管很多人仍然被排除在外，但我们有了一个可行的路线图，并且不需要额外投入数十亿美元的资金来建立为他们提供服务的系统。遵循该路线图图，我们可以帮助他们摆脱贫困，让世界变得更公平。