Banking the unbanked using prepaid platforms and mobile telephones in the United States

The rapid growth of mobile phone usage and the continuous rise in wireless coverage fuel the expectations that access to financial services trough mobile phones could transform the way financial services are provided. The emergence of new and more efficient business models, can potentially resolve supply inefficiencies that explain the large unbanked population that exists in the USA, much larger than in most developed countries. Nearly 40 million US households (approximately 73 million people) are financially underserved (CFSI, 2007), of which 15 million households (approximately 28 million people) are totally unbanked. This problem is explained by the non adequacy of the value proposals offered by financial institutions to the demands of the US customers. The areas of poor alignment refer mostly to the design of products and the marketing and distribution networks used. To resolve these misalignments, this paper will argue that business models based on prepaid cards as products and mobile phones as transactional and distribution channels could be used in order to close the supply gap. We will call the business model proposed based on prepaid products and mobile phones mobile banking, since these two elements are the basis of the business model used companies such as Smart Money and G-Cash in the Phillipines, Wizzit in South Africa and M-Pesa in Kenya.prepaid platform; unbanked; financial services; mobile phones; prepaid cards;

The use of prepaid cards for banking the poor

Prepaid products can become an effective instrument for banking the poor, as they can be used for collecting microdeposits and so operate as a low-cost account. Prepaid platforms have characteristics that make them especially useful for developing low-cost microfinance business models. Indeed, customers using prepaid systems do not need bank accounts or debit or credit cards. Prepaid issuers do not need to develop or invest in new technologies, as this mechanism can be used on a range of platforms, including PCs, mobile phones, hand-held and set-top boxes. Furthermore, prepaid products are specially designed for offering services demanded by the poor, such as micropayments, microdeposits and even microcredits. Lastly, they allow users to monitor their cash flow by receiving statements (some providers offer this feature online, others provide physical statements) or accessing balances through PCs, mobile phones, hand-held and set-top boxes. Besides collecting microdeposits, prepaid products (or SVCs as they are called in the United States) offer other services that can be very valuable for serving the unbanked population. As explained in this paper, prepaid products generally lack the identification and credit requirements that effectively bar millions of individuals from opening traditional bank accounts, especially in the United States. Moreover, prepaid products can be purchased and reloaded at a growing number of locations other than bank branches, such as check cashers, convenience stores and other retailers. Prepaid instruments can also provide immediate availability of funds at a cost that, in some cases, is lower than other alternatives for unbanked consumers. Also, prepaid products are difficult to overdraw, thus reducing the likelihood of unexpected fees. Lastly, many prepaid issuers offer some sort of bill pay option, especially branded cards that enable signature-based transactions, and a significant number of them offer remittances.Prepaid card; microdeposits; mobile phone; store value card; e-money; banking the poor;

Conformal properties of hyperinvariant tensor networks

We thank Santiago Oviedo-Casado, Javier Molina-Vilaplana, Matthias Volk, Sukhbinder Singh, and Michael Kastoryano for insightful discussions, as well as Alexander Jahn, Jens Eisert and Glen Evenbly for their feedback on the manuscript. J.P. is grateful for financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (SPAIN), including FEDER (Grant no. PGC2018-097328-B-100) together with Fundación Séneca (Murcia, Spain) (Project no. 19882/GERM/15).M.S. wrote the main manuscript text. J.P. supervised and reviewed the manuscript.Hyperinvariant tensor networks (hyMERA) were introduced as a way to combine the successes of perfect tensor networks (HaPPY) and the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) in simulations of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Although this new class of tensor network shows much potential for simulating conformal field theories arising from hyperbolic bulk manifolds with quasiperiodic boundaries, many issues are unresolved. In this manuscript we analyze the challenges related to optimizing tensors in a hyMERA with respect to some quasiperiodic critical spin chain, and compare with standard approaches in MERA. Additionally, we show two new sets of tensor decompositions which exhibit different properties from the original construction, implying that the multitensor constraints are neither unique, nor difficult to find, and that a generalization of the analytical tensor forms used up until now may exist. Lastly, we perform randomized trials using a descending superoperator with several of the investigated tensor decompositions, and find that the constraints imposed on the spectra of local descending superoperators in hyMERA are compatible with the operator spectra of several minimial model CFTs.SPAINFundación Séneca 19882/GERM/15Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y UniversidadesEuropean Regional Development Fund PGC2018-097328-B-10

Efficient simulation of strong system-environment interactions

Multi-component quantum systems in strong interaction with their environment are receiving increasing attention due to their importance in a variety of contexts, ranging from solid state quantum information processing to the quantum dynamics of bio-molecular aggregates. Unfortunately, these systems are difficult to simulate as the system-bath interactions cannot be treated perturbatively and standard approaches are invalid or inefficient. Here we combine the time dependent density matrix renormalization group methods with techniques from the theory of orthogonal polynomials to provide an efficient method for simulating open quantum systems, including spin-boson models and their generalisations to multi-component systems

La estructura de los sistemas de pagos al por menor y la bancarización en los Estados Unidos

El 22% de los hogares norteamericanos, aproximadamente 8,4 familias no tienen cuenta corriente o de ahorro. Los factores de oferta más relevantes que explican que muchos norteamericanos pertenecientes a niveles de ingreso medio y bajo no tengan cuenta bancaria son el diseño del producto y los canales de distribución utilizados para su comercialización. En primer lugar, el diseño de los productos bancarios hace que las cuentas corrientes sean demasiado costosas para las familias de bajos ingresos. . Un obstáculo relacionado con el diseño de las cuentas bancarias surge de las dificultades que muchos individuos no bancarizados tienen para acceder a una cuenta bancaria debido a problemas pasados en el sistema bancario. Otro problema de oferta que explica el bajo nivel de tenencia de cuentas bancarias entre los segmentos de población de bajos ingresos, es el escaso número de agencias bancarias en las comunidades menos afluentes. Esta densidad es inferior a la media del país, ya de por si baja cuando se compara con otros países desarrollados.Bancarización; servicios financieros; canales de distribución;

Mejores prácticas en políticas públicas de bancarización en Latinoamérica

Las políticas públicas seguidas en Latinoamérica para la promoción del acceso a los servicios financieros se pueden clasificar en cuatro ejes principales. El primer tipo de políticas busca resolver los problemas de naturaleza social económica que frenan la demanda de grandes segmentos de la población de servicios financieros. El segundo tipo de políticas pretende resolver los problemas institucionales relacionados con el marco legal y la gobernabilidad que frenan el acceso a los servicios financieros de los segmentos de bajos ingresos en los países de la región. El tercer tipo de políticas pretende resolver los problemas regulatorios que distorsionan la provisión de servicios financieros en América Latina. El cuarto tipo de políticas pretende resolver los problemas de oferta relacionados con la forma de operar del sistema financiero que impiden una mayor profundización financiera. Este estudio se concentrará en analizar este cuarto tipo de políticas, aunque revisando previamente los tres tipos de políticas previas. Las políticas públicas deben por tanto potenciar el desarrollo de dichos modelos de bajo coste de prestación de servicios microfinancieros. Las soluciones propuestas deben afrontar los altos precios, la baja densidad de redes de distribución y las inadecuadas metodologías de análisis de riesgos utilizadas por las entidades bancarias que actualmente operan en los países en desarrollo. Estas soluciones técnicas propuestas, unidas a la optimización del impacto de las remesas y la creación de estructuras nodales en red para la obtención de economías de escala, componen elementos a promover por las políticas públicas de oferta. El objetivo final de estas políticas es promover el desarrollo de modelos de negocio eficientes que permitan a las entidades financieras servir rentablemente a una gran parte de los desbancarizados que carecen de acceso al sistema financiero formal. Este trabajo revisará las soluciones propuestas en México y Brasil para la promoción de políticas de promoción de oferta de servicios microfinancieros. El análisis de estos dos casos se explica por la singularidad de las soluciones propuestas. El caso de México representa, a nuestro entender, la combinación de las políticas que mejor abordan la globalidad de los problemas presentados, y en especial una política clara de reforzamiento del sector del ahorro y crédito popular. El caso de Brasil representa una mejor práctica en la utilización de productos de banca electrónica y redes alternativas para la solución de los problemas de oferta.bancarización; servicios microfinancieros; remesas; análisis de riesgo;