Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine, was founded in 2008. Its mission is to foster a community of inquiry and practice on new forms of money and financial technology among the world’s poorest people. IMTFI awards fellowships to researchers in the developing world to conduct 12-month projects, many with a strongly qualitative component. This report discusses IMTFI’s research in its first year 2008-09 and summarizes IMTFI's First Annual Conference that took place at UC Irvine from November 4-6, 2009. 

This report includes Appendix: 11 Design Principles for Financial Services for the Poor: 1) Design for social obligation; 2) Design for social rank; 3) Flexibility with sanctions; 4) Structured illiquidity; 5) Change the iconography; 6) Design with local values; 7) Design for convertibility; 8) Help calculate convertibility, 9) Design for relative volume, not increment; 10) Lucky Numbers, Tranches and Tiers; 11) Design for Cyclical Events. They are presented in a more graphic form within the report.

Go to the Supplemental Material tab to download the conference program for the first cohort of IMTFI researchers: November 4-5, 2009 First Annual Conference for Funded Researchers Program & Bios. 

See full list of Projects from Year 1 - Funded Research 2009