Mastercard Challenge
Combine your entrepreneurial mind with change for good when you improve banking access to underserved communities in the Mastercard Challenge. Did you know that a substantial percentage of the world’s population doesn’t have access to banking services? This constrains their abilities to store, transfer and receive money and increases short and long term financial vulnerability. Mastercard challenges you to come up with a solution!
“There are more than 2 billion unbanked people in the world today. Interestingly, more than two thirds of them do have access to mobile phones. Yet these individuals, who may lack IDs, are effectively excluded from the formal financial system and may be limited to using cash. How can they gain full access to basic financial services such as the ability to make and receive payments?
Without access to the formal financial system, unbanked individuals cannot store, transfer, or receive money, increasing their vulnerability and limiting their ability to control their financial futures. In order to obtain greater financial security and to better meet their basic needs, these populations must be included in the formal financial system.
Unbanked populations face very real challenges, but entrepreneurship and technology are both powerful tools for helping unbanked populations gain access to the formal financial system.
Your challenge from Mastercard is to design a technology product or service that meets the needs of individuals excluded from the formal financial system and helps individuals make and receive payments. Your solution should be simple and safe.”
How do I get started? Click here.
How do I expand this narrative arc? Check out some of the other entrepreneurship ideas we have found for you by searching our database under “Business and Entrepreneurship”. You should think about how you can broaden or deepen your narrative arc, including with one of the following:
Spend your next summer in a pure entrepreneurship program like LaunchX or Quarter Zero
Have a look at Wharton’s Management and Technology summer program.
If you are interested in the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship, consider Sustainable Summer, which includes a program at Dartmouth at which students develop commercial solutions to climate change problems.
Put your ideas into action when you launch a business in your own community.
The Knowledge Society runs year round programs in a number of cities across the country. Find out if there’s a cohort near you.
Want to do something similar through a different organization to expand your network and try your ideas in a different setting? Check out Leangap Entrepreneur.
Try the Entrepreneurship and Investment Camp at the Boston Leadership Institute
HOT TIP: The Mastercard Challenge is just one of many ways that you can link your passion for business with social benefit. The Challenge prompts to you think big, but look around and think about whether some of your ideas can be applied more locally through a community impact project.