Putting the Power of Banking into the hands of Rural Myanmar

Blog

Putting the Power of Banking into the hands of Rural Myanmar

There are good odds that you have checked your bank account on your phone in the last week, maybe even transferred money across or used your paywave to buy a coffee. According to a Mozo survey conducted in October 2019, 1 in 4 banking customers had considered or already switched to one of the new all mobile banks. and 3 in 4 Australians conduct the majority of their banking on a smartphone or a computer 1 . The Australian banking experience is well developed, with significant options for the consumer to choose from. Australians also get the latest technology, including the innovations of the neo banks; fully digital banks , without the traditional, physical branches. This wealth of options and continued innovations have made banking ubiquitous in Australia. However, this is not the case in Myanmar.

Thura lives in Shan State, located in the east side of Myanmar. Thura travels 20 mins to his local credit union on his motorbike, a difficult journey through the rugged mountains of the Shan state from his small farm. Thura is a part of the roughly 25 per cent of the rural population which has access to a bank account through Cufa. As he enters the main village, he passes vendors, lorry drivers and police officers all fixated on their phones, as unlike banks, smartphones are everywhere.

93 percent of Myanmar’s population has access to a smart phone, made accessible by the existence of smart phones as cheap as $20 USD. Thura approaches one of his credit union committee members to deposit some of his savings. The process is currently paper based, using traditional bookkeeping methods. This is about to change however, as soon Thura and his Credit Union committee member are about to be a part of an exciting new project, DigiCUD.

Our DigiCUD program, in Partnership with BankQin and PerformPlus, will involve digitising our current 23 credit unions in Myanmar using. This will allow our Credit Union members to facilitate loan originations, approvals, and disbursements, as well as facilitate deposits. This can all be done of the standard 2G Network (for Australian readers; Australia received the 2G network in 1993!). After digitizing our current credit unions, we hope to introduce an additional 90 villages to the power of credit unions, made easy thanks to the new app.

Our Pilot Program launches soon, and we hope to share our successes and insight with you as Cufa goes on the journey to deliver the power of banking into the hands of those who need it most.

If you would like to find out more about our current Credit Union Development Projects, click here