Inclusive Finance

 DIGITAL FINANCE  /  NEPAL  /  PUBLIC INTEREST From eSewa and Hello Paisa to QR codes on almost every counter, Nepal’s payment story is a genuine achievement. A rising fraud threat is testing whether consumer protection can keep pace. A reported public-interest feature   •   31 October 2026   •   Sources linked at the end The first tap was a leap of faith Before most Nepali people had smartphones, paying a bill meant cash, a counter and sometimes a queue. Banks introduced cards and ATMs earlier, but the real disruption arrived when payments began escaping the bank branch. F1Soft’s eSewa traces its launch to 2009, with a mobile application following in 2010. Its proposition was gloriously ordinary: recharge a phone, pay electricity, buy a ticket, send money—without leaving home. [1] Others saw the same opening from a different angle. Finaccess’s Hello Paisa proposed shared mobile-finance infrastructure for several banks, while Fon...

  Digital Finance | Economy | FinTech | Digital Currency   •   31 OCTOBER 2026 The rise, the setbacks and the economics of central-bank digital currencies — and why India may be discovering their most useful purpose. A customer waves a phone over a QR code. The shopkeeper receives the money immediately. Neither sees notes, coins or a bank teller. So what exactly has changed if a central bank replaces the banking system’s digital balance with a digital version of cash? The screen may look identical. The legal claim behind the screen is not. That distinction sits at the center of the global experiment with central-bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. After a decade of prototypes and half a dozen headline launches, the verdict is less glamorous than the technology: making sovereign money digital is possible. Making it useful enough that people choose it voluntarily is much harder. Across 93 central banks surveyed in 2024, 85 were exploring a CBDC. Yet the Atlantic Counci...