Page 16 - The Digital Financial Services (DFS) Ecosystem

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Ecosystem

to saving. Moreover, digital technologies can make available data analytics on users' financial lives and
therefore increase the willingness to save.
• Credit Histories: electronic payments create records, allowing transaction histories that can support
borrowing by poor consumers and merchants.
• Women’s Empowerment: evidence suggests that digital financial remittances (domestic and international)
empower women within their households. The digital nature of the payment enables the recipient to
keep financial transactions private, even within a family.

Digital financial services, most typically, are seen within the context of one country, using accounts denominated
in that country’s currency, and institutions which are regulated by national regulators. But these services
increasingly intersect, on many levels, with those of other countries, on both a regional and a global basis.
It is a goal in the development of digital financial services to make sure that services are able, as and when
appropriate, to efficiently and safely connect to and integrate with services in other countries.

1.3 The Digital Financial Ecosystem and Its Components

The actors and services that constitute a DFS Ecosystem depend on two fundamental support structures: an
enabling environment and a solid level of infrastructure readiness.

Figure 1 – The Digital Financial Services Ecosystem

• Infrastructure Readiness consists of
– Payments Systems available for transaction between and among end users, including consumers,
merchants, businesses and governments. These payments systems may be public, semi-public, or
private; they may be “closed-loop” or “open-loop”. Security of payments systems is a requirement

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