The Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) published the co-chairs’ summary of its second plenary meeting under South Africa’s G20 presidency, reviewing progress on the 2025 work programme and collecting member steer on key deliverables. Discussions centred on a Presidency priority paper on moving from access to usage of financial services, an implementation framework for the G20 GPFI Action Plan on MSME Finance, a deliverable on innovative technologies for inclusion, and World Bank-led remittances work including a simplified National Remittance Plan (NRP) template. For the access-to-usage deliverable, implementing partners outlined a six-part structure covering global progress using forthcoming Findex 2024 data, updated 2016 usage indicators, impediments to usage, and policy recommendations with case studies, and sought guidance on the completeness and presentation of the proposed framework. The MSME finance action plan implementation framework is built around a voluntary structured survey spanning credit infrastructure, diversification of financing sources, use of fintech technologies, and risk management, supported by qualitative questions on targeting, diagnostics, non-financial support and literacy, and coordination and accountability; webinars and a short trends summary report are intended to complement the survey. The technology deliverable spans challenges to “quality” inclusion, inclusive digital technologies, and the role of digital data trails, Open Finance and Artificial Intelligence, with members requesting clearer linkages across chapters and stronger referencing of prior GPFI work. On remittances, the World Bank presented a timetable to simplify and finalise a new NRP template by 1 August 2025 and noted Remittance Price Worldwide Database findings that the global average cost of sending USD 200 decreased in 2024 and the global SmaRT average fell below 3% for the first time, while more than 60% of corridors still exceeded 5% and the G20 average cost remained 6.51%. Members were given two weeks to provide written comments on the documents discussed. The MSME finance workplan included webinars scheduled for 29 May and 30 June 2025, with a third to be held during the September GPFI plenary, alongside an Annual Conference of the SME Finance Forum in Johannesburg on 15–17 September 2025.
GPFI 2025-07-23
Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion advances G20 2025 deliverables on financial usage, MSME finance, innovative technology and remittances
The Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) released the co-chairs’ summary of its second plenary meeting under South Africa’s G20 presidency, focusing on the 2025 work programme. Key discussions included transitioning from access to usage of financial services, an implementation framework for the G20 GPFI Action Plan on MSME Finance, and innovative technologies for inclusion. The World Bank presented a timetable for a new National Remittance Plan template, noting a decrease in global remittance costs.