Adopting digital financial services by small businesses can increase their access to finance and strengthen their financial inclusion. However, a lack of trust arising from consumer protection risks can limit the adoption process.

Globally, one in three businesses are owned by women, who often encounter obstacles in financing, owning, and growing a business. Digital financial services can have positive business and household impacts on women.

Embedded finance allows small businesses to access financial services through digital interfaces with which they already interact, with the potential to offer faster access to timely and tailored products.

Training programs that are delivered digitally show promise for small business owners with limited time to access key information when they need it. Digital training is convenient, cost-effective, and engaging, so long as it is designed well.

Training that is delivered to small businesses through digital channels is increasingly promising. It can integrate techniques that increase knowledge retention and user engagement, leading to positive impacts for small business capacity building.

Mentoring offers relationship-based guidance from experienced business owners for small businesses to develop new skills and networks to support growth. Digital channels have increased the availability and convenience of mentoring.

Peers can support fellow small business owners by sharing business practices, facilitating new connections, and offering tailored advice. 80% of small businesses believe interacting with peers improves their business outcomes.

For small businesses who want to grow, hiring new staff is not the only option—they could also consider outsourcing. Outsourcing enables small businesses to strengthen and execute their operations and improve efficiency.

Access to finance is critical to small businesses’ development and growth, but few solutions account for their nuanced and diverse needs, resulting in a huge small business financing gap globally.

Small businesses are often more vulnerable to risks and shocks compared to larger enterprises. Insurance can be critical to small businesses better absorbing financial shocks, building assets, and managing risks.

Digitizing payments not only offers small businesses many benefits and efficiencies, it also provides positive spillover effects for their customers and suppliers, and strengthens financial inclusion efforts.

The pandemic challenged traditional approaches to monitoring, evaluation and learning systems for business support programs, presenting new opportunities for optimization, learning, and impact measurement.