Deadline: 30-Aug-21
The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has announced the applications for the Digital Infrastructure for Merchants, Women and Youth.
The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.
Through this RFA, UNCDF proposes to work with a registered entity in Bangladesh that can develop an interoperable fund transfer platform between banks where a banked customer can remit funds to an unbanked or other bank’s customer. Their proposed platform can cater to the otherwise formally financially excluded segment of the customers. Such platform can bridge transactions between the unbanked and the banked/wallet users therefore creating a more inclusive and connected eco-system offering speed and convenience of all. This also aligns with Government of Bangladesh’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2019-2024 to formally include unbanked-unserved segment of population financially.
The requirement is to support already ongoing efforts by having more of use cases that most clearly serve the poor and the low income first, in particular the most marginalized such as micro-merchants, women and youth.
UNCDF takes a tailored approach to engagement with partners, working with each throughout to identify business and customer needs, and helping to design, pilot and scale up the solution along the way. Some examples of the ways in which UNCDF works with partners include:
- Product Research: Sharing market research and knowledge to deepen partners’ understanding of customers’ behaviours, needs, constraints and aspirations. This also includes providing transaction data analysis and training to the business teams.
- Product design: Providing human-centred design expertise to better understand the customer journey – physical and financial – for better product design and use-case development tailored to the needs of low-income customers and their families. The efforts may also involve analysing the transaction data from a customer lens.
- Provisioning: Providing technical assistance to help design, pilot, deploy, and scale up solutions for impact. Technical assistance is provided by digital finance experts who are experienced in product design, business model development and go-to-market strategies in some of the most challenging markets.
- Partnerships: Facilitating strategic partnerships with stakeholders – including cross-border payment hubs, mobile network operators, financial institutions, and non-bank financial institutions – to enable partners to reach last-mile customers, and to grow sustainably. UNCDF is uniquely positioned to be a neutral broker of partnerships and has a record of building strong relationships with private and public organizations.
- Policy and Advocacy: Convening efforts to support an enabling environment and build policy and advocacy capacity for human-centred products and services to be piloted and potentially scaled.
Funding Information
The foreseen budget assigned by UNCDF will be up to USD 300,000. Applicants are expected to fund at least 30% of the total project cost in cash (for costs such technical resources, staff, and operational expenses).
Eligibility Criteria
- The applicant/ lead applicant must be a registered entity and incorporated in Bangladesh.
- The applicant should be operating in Bangladesh for at least 2 years.
- The applicant should have audited financial statements for at least 2 years.
- Applicants may apply only once under this RFA, whether independently or in a consortium. Applications from consortiums of organizations must show that the partnership was established prior to this call for applications or due to this call for application with a letter of intent.
- The solution proposed must be implementable with a project duration of 12 months and ending by October, 2022.
- Applicants must contribute at least 30% of the project’s cash costs (costs may include technical infrastructure, resources, and operations).
- Applicants shall not have been the subject of bankruptcy, liquidation, judicial settlement, safeguarding, cessation of activity or any other similar situation resulting from a similar procedure.
- Applicants and any of their staff or member of their board of directors shall not be included in the United Nations financial sanctions lists, particularly in the fight against the financing of terrorism and against attacks on international peace and security; and
- Applicants must not be involved in any of the following activities: manufacture, sale or distribution of controversial weapons or their components, including cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines, biological or chemical weapons or nuclear weapons; manufacture, sale or distribution of armaments and/or weapons or their components, including military supplies and equipment; replica weapons marketed to children; manufacture, sale or distribution of tobacco or tobacco products; involvement in the manufacture, sale and distribution of pornography; manufacture, sale or distribution of substances subject to international bans or phase-outs, and wildlife or products regulated under the CITES; gambling including casinos, betting etc. (excluding lotteries with charitable objectives); violation of human rights or complicity in human rights violations; use or toleration of forced or compulsory labor; use or toleration of child labor
- Applicants shall have fulfilled all the obligations relating to the payment of social security contributions or obligations relating to the payment of taxes in accordance with legal provisions in force in the country of incorporation
- Applicants must accept the language of UNCDF Performance Based Agreement.
For more information, visit https://www.uncdf.org/article/6973/rfa-interoperable-domestic-remittance-system-digital-infrastructure-for-merchants-women-and-youth