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Conference Presentation, Panel

FinAction: Applying FinTech to Solve Our Greatest Financial Challenges

Milken InstituteJackson Mueller, Henri Dommel, Rory Eakin, Sahil Kini, Valery Vavilov, Craig Vosburg, PETER BARRON, NICOLAS GARCIA, JACKSON GABOURY, RORY KAUFMANN, David
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  • Jackson Mueller, director of the FinTech program at the Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets, emphasized moving the conversation from theoretical hype to measurable end-user impact in the financial technology sector.
  • Mike Milken highlighted that new financial technologies are essential to providing millions of people with access to the financial system globally.
  • MasterCard targets bringing 500 million unbanked people into the financial mainstream; over 300 million have already gained access via electronic payments.
  • Electronic payments have driven an estimated $2 trillion in incremental GDP growth and created over 20 million jobs in the U.S. alone.
  • Approximately 2 billion people worldwide remain excluded from banking services, with the unbanked and underbanked populations disproportionately consisting of women.
  • In the U.S., 20–25% of the population is underbanked, with a significant portion remaining completely unbanked.
  • MasterCard has partnered with governments in South Africa, Nigeria, India, and the U.S. to digitize social benefit payments, saving over 5 million people hundreds of millions of dollars in check-cashing fees.
  • A five-year City Initiative in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, D.C., Oakland, St. Louis, and other locations identified specific financial needs for immigrants, entrepreneurs, low-income neighborhoods, the middle class, and gig economy workers.
  • MasterCard is developing ID-card-integrated payment solutions for "New Americans" and using transaction data to enable non-traditional credit underwriting for small business entrepreneurs.
  • CircleUp, founded in 2012, has helped over 300 non-tech consumer and retail businesses raise more than $300 million in growth equity by using alternative data sources.
  • CircleUp tracks over 1 million private U.S. companies using billions of data points derived from social media, retailer interactions, and credit card transactions.
  • The failure rate for CircleUp-backed companies over five years is less than 5%, significantly lower than traditional tech venture capital cohorts.
  • CircleUp focuses on Series A-equivalent companies with approximately $1 million in revenue, offering debt financing at 500–1,000 basis points lower cost of capital than traditional sources.
  • Bitfury is implementing blockchain technology to digitize assets such as property titles and identity documents, aiming to shift control from centralized systems to individual users.
  • In Georgia and Ukraine, Bitfury is migrating existing government registry systems to blockchain to prevent property loss due to data tampering and reduce administrative corruption.
  • Valerie Vavilov noted that while the internet digitized information flow, blockchain is the first technology designed to secure the digitization of high-value assets.
  • India's Aadhaar digital identity system enrolled 1 billion people in under six years, providing formal identity to 400 million previously "ghost" populations.
  • The "Jandhan Yojana" scheme, linked to Aadhaar, has opened 270 million bank accounts with an average balance of $40, facilitating direct subsidy transfers.
  • India's UPI payment layer, modeled after email protocols, enables free, instant bank-to-bank transfers, effectively bypassing traditional card networks for low-value transactions.
  • The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has reached 15 million clients across 31 least-developed countries through partnerships with 125 private financial service providers.
  • UNCDF's remittance strategy focuses on three pillars: shifting flows from informal to formal channels, reducing transaction costs, and linking remittances to insurance and savings products.
  • A mobile wallet pilot in Nepal with EMI reached 25,000 subscribers, with users gaining access to insurance products after completing more than one transaction per month.
  • An MTN and Commercial Bank of Africa partnership in Uganda launched a mobile wallet four months ago, reaching 1.4 million subscribers with automatic credit scoring based on MNO data.
  • India's average bank account balance rose 8x post-demonetization, with total balances across 270 million accounts exceeding $10 billion.
  • Craig Vosburgh of MasterCard stated that while transaction fees may decline, the long-term value driver for payment networks will be the monetization of data to facilitate lending and economic growth.
  • The UNCDF advocates for "regulatory sandboxes" to allow innovation testing while monitoring consumer protection, citing successful collaborations in Kenya.
  • Rory Eakin suggested that governments digitalizing social payments are creating opportunities for new financing models to reach micro-businesses without burdening them with high-interest debt.
  • Sunil Khan noted that for many micro-entrepreneurs, high-interest working capital loans (up to 1,000% APR) consume all cash flow, preventing asset accumulation and growth.
  • MasterCard and CircleUp both identified that non-traditional lenders are more agile than legacy banks in utilizing alternative data to underwrite credit for small businesses.