By Didi Rankovic<\/p>\n\n\n\n One wouldn\u2019t have pegged Mastercard for that corporation that is \u201cdriving sustainable social impact\u201d and caring about remote communities around the world struggling to meet basic needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, here we are \u2013 or at least that\u2019s how the global payment services behemoth advertises its push to proliferate the use of a scheme called Community Pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The purpose of Community Pass is to enable a digital ID and wallet that\u2019s contained in a \u201csmart card.\u201d Launched four years ago, the program \u2013 which Mastercard says, in addition to being based on digital ID, is interoperable, and works offline \u2013 targets \u201cunderserved communities\u201d and currently has 3.5 million users, with plans of growing that number to 30 million by 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a map on Mastercard\u2019s site, this program is now being either piloted or has been rolled out in India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Mauritania, while the latest announcement is the partnership with the African Development Bank Group in an initiative dubbed, Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plan is to, over ten years, make sure 100 million people and businesses in Africa are included in digital ID programs and thus allowed access to government and \u201chumanitarian\u201d services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Community Pass itself, it aims to incorporate 15 million users on the continent over the next five years. This is Mastercard\u2019s part of the deal, whereas the said it would invest $300 million to make sure MADE happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given how controversial digital ID schemes are, and how much pushback they encounter in developed countries, it\u2019s hard to shake off the impression that such initiatives are pushed so aggressively in economically disadvantaged areas and communities precisely because little opposition is expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But MADE is presented as almost a \u201chumanitarian\u201d service itself \u2013 there, apparently, solely to make life better, in particular for farmers and women, and improve things like connectivity, financial services, employment rates, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The news about Mastercard\u2019s latest partnership and initiative came from a US-Africa business forum organized by the US Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the African Development Bank Group is going to invest $300 million, you have to think it has legs. Perhaps driving adoption and history in other countries will make it more palatable in the west where people are rejecting the notion of digital ID and all that entails? And of course, the OCGFC megacorp Mastercard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7485,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions\/7485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reclaimthenet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/mc-afr-scaled.jpg\")
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