Beyond Mobile Money: Building Financial Infrastructure for the Informal Economy

​Mobile money changed everything. And then it didn't change enough.

​Across Africa, the informal economy accounts for the majority of employment and economic activity. Yet the financial infrastructure built to serve it from mobile wallets to agent banking, was largely designed to bring informal actors into formal systems, rather than build from the logic of how those systems already work.

​The result: millions of people who transact daily through savings groups, trade credit, and community trust networks remain underserved by the very tools built in their name.

​Session 04 of Catalyst Commons asks what comes next.

​What does genuine financial infrastructure for the informal economy look like not as an add-on to existing systems, but as the foundation? How do you build it sustainably? And what does the business model look like when your customer has been historically excluded from the financial system entirely?

​This session is free, virtual and open to all founders whether you're building in fintech or not. The lessons from this session are for anyone serious about building for underserved markets in Africa.