The ‘Digital Finance for Resilience’ is a four-year programme supported by the European Union and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and implemented by the UN Capital Development Fund. The programme aims to deploy digital finance solutions at scale to deepen financial inclusion and accelerate economic recovery from COVID-19 to make economies and societies more resilient to external shocks.

Digital financial services empower individuals and create market systems that address a wide range of challenges, such as climate change, urbanization, and the digital divide. Inclusive digital payment services are a core component of resilient financial markets and facilitate recovery. They enable innovative solutions for retail credit, insurance, and savings, in addition to increasing social distancing, enabling health workers to be paid reliably and on time, and providing government-led cash transfers more efficiently.  

UNCDF has a decade of experience providing technical assistance and capital to countries in ACP regions and uses UNCDF its vast technical knowledge and convening power to bring together the public and private sectors to create local, sustainable solutions that leverage digital technology.  

In a post COVID-19 world, the DFS4Resilience Programme will contribute to the deployment of digital finance solutions at the scale and speed that are necessary to accelerate economic recovery amidst COVID-19 to make economies and societies more resilient to external shocks.  

Governments play a critical role in the early response to emergencies and creating an enabling environment for economic recovery. Private sector players, particularly payment service providers, play an equally vital role in ensuring people have access to formal payment systems, mitigating immediate shocks and creating opportunities for increased resilience.  

Therefore, the specific objectives of the Programme are:  

• To improve digital finance policies and regulations to provide early response to emergencies and create an enabling environment to economic recovery. 
• To create and strengthen digital finance ecosystems that support low income individuals in particular women and youth; and MSMEs to mitigate immediate shocks of emergencies and increase economic opportunities. 

Currently the Programme design and implements activities in Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi and Niger in Africa, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean and Fiji, Samoa, Timor Leste, Tonga and Vanuatu in the Pacific.

The UNCDF DFS4Resilience team closely collaborates with regulators, policymakers, regional bodies, financial services providers (including banks, MFIs, FinTechs, MNOs), MSMEs and people living in poverty.