AFI and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish a high-level framework of cooperation that will promote and enable digital financial services (DFS) and has the potential to make an effective contribution to financial inclusion.

The MOU—which was signed on 6 September 2016 in Nadi, Fiji, ahead of the 2016 AFI Global Policy Forum (GPF)—provides a broad umbrella for collaboration on digital financial services.

It also ensures engagement between AFI and ITU and dialogue on issues of common interest between DFS regulators from the financial services and telecommunications sectors.

AFI’s Executive Director, Alfred Hannig, is confident about the impact of the MOU saying that, “Partnerships are one of the pillars of financial inclusion, and this agreement will help to make this pillar even stronger. Through knowledge exchanges and peer learning activities, the combined experience and skills of AFI and ITU will be invaluable in the global effort to bring the world’s 2 billion unbanked into the formal sector.