IoT and financial inclusion is just around the corner, MasterCard reports

Citing India’s gigantic national ID project, digital identity initiatives underway in Nigeria, and the advent of mass mobile connectivity, Anne Cairns, president of International Markets at MasterCard, admitted that while there has been progress in bringing financial services and digital identity to the underserved, there is still a long way to go.

Cairns sees biometric authentication as a technology that is enabling inclusion, and the same goes for the Internet of Things.

However, the road to financial inclusion seems to be long – over 90 million people in Europe alone are still underserved, and Cairns says that the migrant crisis stands to increase that number. Still, it is possible to one day achieve total financial inclusion. A great number of companies and organizations around the world including Google and Facebook are endeavoring to bring digital identity to the masses, and along with that will come the financial services that many believe to be a human right.