Singapore Business Times, by Fraser Thompson and Sacha Polverini for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 27 October 2016
Digital financial services can be crucial for overcoming the tyranny of geography in Southeast Asia, where traditional financial institutions have found it difficult to build out their footprint in remote areas and across many islands. The expansion of digital financial services throughout ASEAN in recent years has been impressive. Consider the numbers. Between 2011 and 2014 alone, the share of adults in ASEAN with a bank account grew from 42 percent to 50 percent of the population.
