The Philippines' Social Amelioration Program started in March of 2020 sought to provide cash assistance to 18 million households. The first tranche of payments experienced significant delivery challenges, leading to changes in the second tranche. This case study aims to document lessons learned from the second tranche.
Alan Gelb, Anurodh Giri, Anit Mukherjee, Ritesh Rautela, Mitul Thapliyal, and Brian Webster 
India imposed a lock-down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and began a gradual re-opening in June. A telephonic survey in April examined the early effectiveness of information and the massive PMGKY social protection program (Policy Paper 217). This paper analyzes a second-round survey, conducted six months later. Logistical and information constraints had relaxed, and incomes and jobs had begun to stabilize for some. There were not...
Keyzom Ngodup Massally, Nabila Khurshed, Camilo Tellez-Merchan, Azizur Rahman, Vikas Singh, Anir Chowdhury, Dewan Md. Humayun Kabir
Investment in the digital infrastructure of the country has been a priority for the Government of Bangladesh in the past decade, ever since the vision for Digital Bangladesh was launched. Digital payments are critical to the government’s vision and ensuring these are scaled responsibly is now critical. The National Digital Payments Roadmap (‘the Roadmap’) provides a high-level plan to expand the adoption of responsible digital payments in a way that...
International Monetary Fund, Asia and Pacific Department
There are two key longstanding structural constraints to inclusive growth in Indonesia—low financial inclusion and limited access to finance—resulting in a large financing gap. Indonesia’s digitalization— growing rapidly in the e-commerce and financial services sector, the latter facilitated by fintech—is helping close this gap. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely serve to further accelerate this digital transformation: adoption of e-commerce and digital payments has increased amidst lockdowns and social distancing. Digitalization...
Lena Gronbach, Jeremy Seekings, Vayda Megannon
This paper reviews South Africa’s social protection policies and their implementation during the COVID-19 crisis. Overall, the government reached over 30 million South Africans with cash-based relief measures. A distinctive feature of cash-based emergency relief was the use of digital technologies, especially in the application and verification process for the new SRD grant. The payment system, however, relied heavily on manual cash disbursements, thus failing to reflect the adoption of...
Muhammad Aditya Purnomo
This paper discusses efforts to digitize Indonesia’s social protection systems in the context of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative. It summarizes the trajectory of database development and use in Indonesia, as well as the country’s 2017 mandate that all government benefits be distributed in a cashless manner.
Sara Pavanello
The use of cash as a modality for delivering humanitarian and social protection assistance in Lao PDR is nascent. Up until recently, cash in hand has been the only feasible way to deliver transfers to targeted recipients. This scoping exercise highlights how mobile money could redress some of the drawbacks linked to cash in hand for both cash actors and beneficiaries. These include: access constraints, lack of traceability, and the...
