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Globally, there are 1.4 billion unbanked people who can’t access financial services, while around 345 million micro-enterprises are informal and struggle to get formal banking services. Zaki Farooq, CTO and Co-Founder of PayFuture, discusses why the financial literacy and exclusion gap needs to be filled – fast.

Financial literacy is the key to unlocking a new era of prosperity for all. It’s a bold statement, but also a simple truth that is evidenced time and time again.

This is a universal problem, and it’s one that’s particularly acute in emerging markets with significant underbanked and unbanked populations. According to the World Bank, Japan has the highest percentage of people with formal bank accounts at 89%, contrasted with Nigeria at 45%. Standard & Poor’s own financial literacy survey found that only 28% of adults in emerging markets were financially literate, compared to 55% in more mature economies.

How Financial Literacy Fuels Global Financial Inclusion Efforts

From local community and microcredit cooperatives in rural Africa that help women to engage with financial services, to national digital transformation programmes like Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative, financial literacy is the cornerstone that financial inclusion is built on.

While some of these financial exclusion gaps can be addressed with more network infrastructure and mobile connectivity, understanding how bank accounts, cards and other products can be used effectively is one of the biggest building blocks for a more financially inclusive world.

Even in developed and mature markets like the UK, improving financial literacy is still necessary. Consider that a 2021 Financial Times survey found that 90% of people in England felt they’d learnt “nothing at all” or “not very much” about finance at school.

When most people hit the age of 18, they’ll start applying for bank accounts, credit cards, loans and other financial services. Strange then that so many people around the world don’t know the basics of financial products at the point when they begin to engage with them. We know how useful these products are in our daily lives, so understanding how to use them is essential if we are to give financial inclusion to those who need it the most.

How to Build Financial Literacy from an Early Age

It’s never too early or too late to improve financial literacy. Parents can help their children learn how to handle money, why it’s important to keep to a budget and not spend beyond their means, and in the case of credit products, the importance of making repayments on time.

The trick to making these lessons stick is to make them fun. There will be many daily opportunities for parents to instil financial literacy – from getting kids to add up item prices while grocery shopping, setting a budget and savings goal to buy their favourite toy, or showing them how a debit card links to a bank account.

For adults, there are several financial tools available at their fingertips. Prepaid cards are great tools for introducing people to using payment cards responsibly, as they can only spend the funds that they load onto them.

Prepaid cards work in the same way as a bank debit card, but without any overdraft attached, and they can be used for in-person, contactless, and online purchases. With the same security features as debit and credit cards, prepaid cards also allow for instant notifications through apps or digital wallets, enabling people to keep track of what they’ve spent and where, and helping them to budget responsibly.

Understanding how timely repayments on credit products can contribute to building up a healthy credit score is also another building block of financial literacy. A good credit score can open up access to more affordable financial services and products. When people are empowered with financial literacy, they can move forward into the financial mainstream with confidence, with the knowledge, tools, and strong financial habits to navigate a world of different financial products and services.

Why Fintechs Can Break Down the Financial Exclusion Barriers

The financial exclusion gap is getting smaller by the day, but much more needs to be done. Fintech has a vital role to play in aiding financial inclusion, reducing poverty and giving individuals and businesses the knowledge they need to engage and thrive in today’s digital-first world. New technologies have helped emerging markets make great strides toward financial inclusion – look at the success of mobile banking services in Africa.

Through innovative solutions that can bridge gaps in physical infrastructure, mobile connectivity and cross-border trade, fintech can empower people to break the cycle of poverty, make plans for the future, and create their own opportunities.

This also means that fintechs and other ecosystem players have a responsibility to understand what market they’re operating in, understand what customers need in those markets, and localise their solutions accordingly. That also means speaking in the local language, offering clear and transparent pricing, and forging reliable partnerships with the right providers to ensure people have a wide choice of payment methods available to them.

With so much transaction data available, fintechs can tailor financial products to fit the circumstances of underbanked individuals. They can build a stronger, more flexible and more personalised ecosystem that really makes a difference to people’s lives.

When more people are given the literacy, knowledge and tools to engage with financial services, communities thrive, businesses grow, and local and national economies are boosted. The result? A truly global interconnected world that can offer more prosperous futures for all.

Author: Zaki Farooq, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of PayFuture.

This article was written by FM Contributors at www.financemagnates.com.

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Of all the developments in crypto trading, the trend towards on-chain liquidity is one of the most consequential, allowing projects to prove their financial health with unprecedented transparency.

This evolution represents a fundamental shift from traditional centralized exchange (CEX) dominance to more decentralized trading mechanisms, particularly in the fast-growing meme token sector.

Into this milieu, meme perpetual contracts – meme perps – have emerged as a sophisticated trading instrument enabling speculation on memecoin prices without expiration dates. By granting traders this kind of exposure to the volatile but potentially lucrative meme token market, meme perps have become a hot commodity, particularly on the Solana network.

A Meme Trading Hub

Solana’s status as a premier destination for meme token trading is easy to understand in light of the blockchain’s impressive scalability (over 65,000 tps) and low transaction costs.

This year, the ecosystem’s growth has been largely attributable to the success of Pump.fun, a one-click meme coin launchpad that facilitated over a million token launches within its first year.

For better or worse, the perception of meme coins as the assets most likely to 100x or 500x has remained intact, leading many individuals and enterprises to launch their very own memecoins in the hope of sucking in liquidity. While Solana is much more than a playground for memes, its meme market cap now sits at an impressive $18.6 billion.

So, who are the prime movers in this new landscape of on-chain liquidity and meme perps?

Leading Platforms Shaping the Meme Perps Market

Orderly Network

Orderly Network has positioned itself as a pillar of the meme perps ecosystem by launching a cross-chain orderbook on Solana, marking the first time EVM and non-EVM orders have been combined into a single perps orderbook.

The network’s sophisticated infrastructure combines advanced trading capabilities with robust liquidity provision, enabling seamless integration for various market participants through a comprehensive SDK.

With over $65 billion in cumulative trading volume, more than 400,000 on-chain users, and connections to multiple major chains, Orderly Network demonstrates the growing maturity of the meme perps market. Indeed, its orderbook integrates over 30 DEXs and 73 trading perps, enabling Solana traders to enjoy omnichain DeFi trading for the first time.

LI.FI

LI.FI’s expansion from Phantom to Solana earlier this year saw it facilitate millions in trading volume between Solana and EVM chains, significantly deepening on-chain liquidity and supercharging cross-chain trading.

Its integration with Jupiter (the blockchain’s top aggregator) and leading Solana bridges like Mayan and Circle CCTP has meanwhile created a comprehensive solution for those looking to jump on the meme perps bandwagon. Interestingly, LI.FI’s growing network of liquidity sources includes DEXs, bridges, solvers, and aggregators.

Anoma

Anoma represents a particularly innovative approach to meme perps trading, its distributed operating system simplifying complex transactions through a novel intent-based architecture.

For the uninitiated, intent-based architecture sees a network of specialized ‘solvers’ compete to execute user objectives. By letting users define their objectives/intents rather than specific transactions, and for solvers to quickly execute complex transactions on their behalf (including on the behalf of meme perp traders), this model effectively abstracts away technical complexities and improves transaction efficiency.

After four long years of research and development, Anoma is getting ready to open its doors to builders in 2025.

Risky Business

It should come as a surprise to no-one that trading meme perps carries the same inherent risks as trading memecoins, generally. Death, taxes and the high volatility of memecoins seem like three cast-iron laws of the universe!

That being said, the future of this category seems bright, particularly with infrastructure evolving and institutional interest on the march. The ongoing integration of cross-chain solutions such as those mentioned above, as well as the deepening of on-chain liquidity, suggests the sector will play an increasingly important role in the broader DeFi ecosystem.

Indeed, it’s not difficult to imagine meme perps becoming a standard component of crypto trading portfolios, particularly for those seeking exposure to what remains a very lucrative, albeit unpredictable, market.

This article was written by FM Contributors at www.financemagnates.com.

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