The Clean Energy Solutions Center, in partnership with UN Foundation’s Energy Access Practitioner Network and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), hosted this webinar to highlight the opportunities for Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) solar to be a driver of mobile money adoption and introduce a new tool to guide rapid market assessments. The webinar was the second in the UN Foundation’s finance-focused webinar series that highlighted financing challenges and solutions at the cutting edge of the energy access sector.

Many off-grid energy companies offer PAYG business models, allowing poor households to pay off the cost of a solar product by making small payments over a longer period of time. When PAYG companies integrate with a local mobile money service, repayments can be automated. This lowers the cost of repayment for both the company and the customer, minimizes risk to the company as the system can be turned off remotely in the event of nonpayment, and can help customers build credit history that can be used to access additional financing in the future. In more nascent mobile money markets, PAYG solar can create an incentive for clients to open a mobile money account for the first time, simultaneously expanding access to electricity and creating pathways to financial inclusion.

The webinar examined the key factors of a potential PAYG market that may indicate an opportunity to advance both access to energy and financial inclusion. It highlighted the newly developed Rapid Assessment Framework, which identifies key features of the mobile and energy infrastructure for supporting PAYG solar and mobile money adoption.