The Lab for Inclusive FinTech (LIFT) is a research partnership aimed at unlocking the potential of digital financial technologies to benefit underserved populations around the world. LIFT has three major thrusts: research, experiential learning, and community building. LIFT links academic researchers with industry partners and policymakers to reimagine the design and reach of digital financial services to build a healthy, inclusive, and sustainable digital economy.

LIFT Research Partners

Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

The Center for Inclusive Growth advances equitable and sustainable economic growth and financial inclusion around the world. The Center leverages the company’s core assets and competencies, while administering the philanthropic Mastercard Impact Fund, to produce independent research, scale global programs and empower thinkers, leaders, and doers on the front lines of inclusive growth.

Kiva

Kiva is an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 in San Francisco, with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive. Kiva does this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world.

Mercy Corps Ventures

Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV) is the impact investing arm of global humanitarian agency, Mercy Corps. As part of their goal to accelerate global financial inclusion, MCV works with partners to advance innovative, responsible distributed ledgers, digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and other decentralized finance solutions that help underbanked and underserved groups join the global economy.

Reserve

The Reserve team believes that access to a stable currency and equal access to financial services are basic human rights. Reserve is currently focused on building out the ecosystem and platform to provide stable currency to the populations who need it the most – those that experience high inflation and lack of access to banking services in LatAm. Using the Reserve app and platform, more than 600,000 humans have been able to earn, save, spend, and transfer stable money across borders to their families and run their businesses. Our vision is for anyone in the world to have those basic capabilities at their fingertips.

CARE

CARE is a global leader within a worldwide movement dedicated to ending poverty. CARE is partnering with leaders in the cryptocurrency movement to deliver crypto-based vouchers to women in Africa and Latin America.

Solar Sister

Solar Sister brings a unique gender lens to the issue of energy poverty through a women-powered last-mile distribution model that delivers clean energy to underserved households in Sub-Saharan Africa. Solar Sister leverages women’s entrepreneurship to create a network of sustainable local energy businesses that reaches the most underserved and off-grid communities.

ENGIE

ENGIE Energy Access set the benchmark for off-grid solar in Africa, covering every customer need, while protecting the environment and accelerating the green energy transition. ENGIE is a long-term partner to Africa for its growing population’s energy needs.

RAPPICARD MEXICO

The mission of RappiCard Mexico is to enable its customers to easily navigate through their financial lives. As a joint venture between the Mexican bank Banorte and Rappi, the leading delivery platform in Latin America, RappiCard is unlocking the potential of big data and technology to expand credit and transform the financial landscape of the region.