About
FIT IN Initiative
Financial Inclusion Through INteroperability
In November 2020, the Toulouse School of Economics launched the FIT IN Initiative to catalyze new research to constructively influence the design and regulation of interoperable digital financial services systems in low- and middle-income countries. The initiative ended in 2024.
The main objective of this four-year research initiative was to better understand the implications of alternative competition and regulatory policies and ultimately inform policies to expand the scope, improve the quality and reduce the cost of digital payment systems for impoverished users.
The FIT IN Initiative received support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor program.
Research topics
Topics of competition, incentives, regulation, governance, technology adoption, and welfare impacts related to features of and choices in designing interoperable payment systems were central to the research agenda of the initiative.
Examples of questions that researchers investigated:
- Incentives: how to strike a balance between competition and cooperation?
- Governance: how key assets should be managed?
- Welfare: what is the impact of interoperable systems on market participants?
Research approach
The initiative involved a combination of descriptive, theoretical, and empirical research, drawing on expertise from literatures on industrial organization, digital finance, technology adoption, development economics, mechanism design, and public policy.
The FIT IN Initiative was developed at the crossroads between the TSE Digital Center, the TSE Sustainable Finance Center and the TSE Infrastructure & Network Center.
In-house and external contributors
Stakeholders of the initiative on TSE's side included faculty, post-docs, and graduate students.
The initiative also relied on contributions of external contributors with:
- the creation of a formal academic and policy affiliate network,
- the launch of a request for research proposals.
Outputs and outreach
Program outputs included a guiding white paper ("Mobile Payments and Interoperability: Insights from the Academic Literature", December 2021), a series of working papers and academic publications that had been summarized in outreach materials designed to inform policymakers.
Key events, organized in the framework of the initiative, included workshops, webinars and conferences for academics or for a wider audience. The initiative aimed to facilitate connections between researchers, policymakers, regulators, commercial providers and practitioners.
Advisory board
List of permanent members:
- Milo Bianchi - Head of operations for the program, TSE
- Emmanuelle Auriol - Scientific Head of the program, TSE
- Sébastien Pouget - Director of TSE-Partnership, TSE
Other member with a consultative voice:
- Seth Garz - Program Officer for Research in Financial Services for the Poor, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
