What's New and What's Next

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What's Next: Blog | We're Expanding Our Financial Consumer Protection Work. Here's Why.

The CPRI is sticking around for another four years! With a generous extension of support from the Gates Foundation, we’ll be redoubling our efforts to work with government and private sector partners to monitor emerging risks and test solutions to address these challenges. To help inform Phase 2 of our research, we hosted the Consumer Protection Innovation Exchange in Nairobi, Kenya in late 2024.Learn more here about what Phase 2 of the Initiative holds and what experts from our event think are some of the most pressing consumer protection issues.
 

What's New: Report | CPRI: Gender & Consumer Protection Learning Agenda

Financial products and services are crucial in empowering women, helping them take control of their finances and improve their resilience. However, not all consumers are the same, and financial risks can vary across demographic groups. That’s why we looked into what consumer protection evidence exists that highlights gendered differences and where research gaps need to be filled. Check out the report to learn more (and get some ideas to submit to our Call for Proposals💡– see below).
 

What's Next: Funding | Launch of 2025 CPRI Call for Proposals on April 7th

Can we get a drum roll please🥁…The CPRI is officially launching our 2025 Call for Proposals! We’ll be accepting proposals starting next week, and optional Expressions of Interest are due May 4th, with full proposals due June 15th. Keep an eye out for the full proposal guidelines. We will also be hosting a Q&A session on April 16th. We hope to see you there and look forward to reading all of your proposals!
 

What's New: Report & Toolkit | Transaction Cost Index: Year 2

It’s been two years since the launch of the first round of results from IPA’s Transaction Cost Index (TCI) and we are excited to announce that Year 2 results are officially here, along with some cool new resources. IPA has been working hard to uncover the true costs of mobile money services—from monetary costs like informal charges by agents to non-pecuniary costs like wait times and transaction failures. If you head over to our landing page, you can access:

1. Latest blog diving into the Year 2 result
2. Year 2 Report
3. A Toolkit for Measuring the Real Costs of Digital Financial Services
4. Three Country-Specific Briefs: Uganda, Tanzania, & Bangladesh

Don’t have time to read all of this? Then join us on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, for a webinar, where we will walk through our results and new tools. Register here.
 

What's Next: Blog | The Realities of Using Digital Financial Services in Nigeria

IPA recently completed the 2024 Nigeria Consumer Protection Survey, which is part of a broader set of surveys that we will run during the second phase of IPA’s Consumer Protection Research Initiative. This survey explores how Nigerians use digital financial services (DFS), the challenges they encounter, and how they seek redress. As Brian Mwesigwa explains in a new blog, the findings paint a complex picture—rapid growth alongside significant consumer protection concerns. Nearly one in four users reported experiencing unexpected fees, charges, or fraud attempts in the past year. Yet, among those facing issues, only half pursued formal redress. These are just a few of the results, but there’s much more to uncover. Check out the full Nigeria survey report, and stay tuned for results from additional country surveys coming soon!
 

What's New: Blog | How Simple, Interactive Lessons Reduce Fraud for Ugandan Mobile Money Customers

How can gamification help digital financial service (DFS) users stay ahead of fraudsters? IPA researchers partnered with Viamo to test how Wanji Games influence knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors when dealing with fraudsters’ tactics. The results are in—did interactive gameplay make a difference? You can find out for yourself in this new blog, where we explore how the games impacted users and the scalability of this tool. Plus, you can experience a snippet of the interactive content for yourself below!

What's New: Working Paper | Navigating the Rise in Non-Institutional Digital Fraud: An Experiment with Micro Enterprises in Nigeria

How can we prevent fraud amongst micro and small enterprises in low- and middle-income countries? IPA researchers tested out two strategies in Nigeria for preventing fraud:

1. A series of anti-fraud learning interventions
2. Using a unique communications code to authenticate incoming communications.

Overall, the evidence shows that timely education increased trust in DFS. However, when we asked participants to identify whether messages were real or fraudulent, there were no improvements in fraud detection. Dig into the details of the study here and check out the project summary here.
 

What's New: Blog | Empowering Consumers: The Impact of Legal Aid on Mobile Money Disputes

IPA research in Uganda found that 78 percent of survey respondents encountered at least one consumer protection challenge with their mobile financial services. But are these users able to resolve these issues? And how can we make the resolution process easier and more successful? IPA worked with Matthieu Chemin (McGill University) and Silver Kayando (Center of Technology Disputes Resolution - Uganda) to provide free legal aid to help resolve consumer complaints against MNOs. Here’s what they found:

1. Legal aid is currently necessary to protect consumers against the practices of large MNOs holding significant market power.
2. The type of MNO dispute may impact the likelihood of resolution.
3. Research now shows that better access to legal institutions matters for the process of economic development.

Check out the blog and project summary to learn more.

Things that Make Us Think

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Publication: A new paper, using data from a CPRI study, from Nitin Kohli and Joshua Blumenstock, dives into the growing use of mobile phones in low- and middle-income countries, where digital data is being used to make decisions that impact people's lives, such as through access to government benefits or loans. The authors develop an approach to using algorithmic decisions based on personal data, while also providing formal privacy guarantees to individuals involved in the study.

Reports: Microsave recently published multiple consumer protection-related reports focused on the impacts of fraud on DFS users and social welfare recipients’ user experiences with digital lending applications. Read more below:

1. Mind the gap: Closing the loopholes in consumer protection in digital financial services (2024)
2. Frauds: The Achilles heel of Aadhaar-enabled Payments System transactions (2024)
3. Understanding users’ experience with Digital Lending Applications in India (2024)
4. How to fight fraud against government program beneficiaries in India (2024)

Reports: Check out the latest releases from Dvara Research below:

1. Building an Effective UPI In-App GRM for India’s Consumers: This project focuses on improving the in-app support for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India, of both banks and third parties. It specifically aims to better assist users with low literacy and digital skills when they face transaction issues. The landing page hosts a framework, toolkit, sets of prototypes, and an overall report for the project.
2. Curbing Scams in Unified Payments Interface: This white paper offers solutions to tackle the growing problem of scams in India’s UPI system, proposing a new fraud management framework to improve reporting, coordination, and enforcement. What are the key vulnerabilities and actionable steps we can take to protect users?

​​​​​​Policy Note: Over the past decade, financial well-being has gained increasing attention as a key factor in individual and economic stability. A policy note, developed for the G20 Global Partnership on Financial Inclusion (GPFI) by Brazil’s 2024 G20 Presidency and the OECD—alongside CGAP and UNSGSA—lays out a shared understanding of financial well-being. It introduces a working definition, a preliminary framework for measurement, and a roadmap for shaping policies that enhance financial well-being. By recognizing the broader economic and social factors at play, this work aims to guide financial sector policies that can make a real impact. Read more here.

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