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Mastercard, Financial Access Initiative Partner to Enable More Small Businesses Benefit From Digital Economy
The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and The Financial Access Initiative (FAI) at New York University have announced the launch of The Small Firm Diaries, a global research initiative that will provide unprecedented insight into the financial lives of small businesses across six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
The study will examine how small firms manage the adoption of digital financial services, with a focus on women-led businesses.
By collecting detailed quantitative and qualitative data insights from firms employing between 1 and 20 non-family workers in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Colombia, Indonesia and Fiji, the study will shed light on how small business owners across the world manage their financial decision making amidst uncertain and volatile economies.
While there has been a great deal of research on informal family-run “microenterprises,” and more professionalized “medium-sized” firms, the needs of small firms are not yet well-understood.
For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, small firms play a crucial role in economic development and job creation and insight is needed to understand the unique challenges faced by them in order to create sustainable solutions for their longevity and growth.
According to The World Bank, it is estimated that SMEs are responsible for 77% of all jobs in Africa and as much as half of the GDP in some countries.
The research initiative, supported by the Center, aims to provide financial service providers, policymakers, and practitioners with knowledge and recommendations to address barriers to adoption of digital financial services.
“We must understand how small enterprises work in order to develop interventions that reduce inequality and increase financial security amongst financially underserved communities,” said Natasha Jamal, Regional Director, Middle East and Africa, with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.
“This first-of-its-kind research will provide on the ground insights into what barriers and opportunities exist for small firms to adopt digital financial services and participate in an inclusive economy.”
“Small firms are by far the biggest employer in low and middle-income economies.
“Despite decades of statistical research, fundamental questions remain about why some grow, and some stagnate,” said Jonathan Morduch, Executive Director of the Financial Access Initiative and Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University.
“ Our aim is to go into the field and try to understand small firms from the bottom-up, by listening closely to how entrepreneurs and workers make choices on their own terms.”
“Just as household financial diaries have been crucial to understanding the needs of low-income households around the world, and the barriers to achieving household financial security, the kind of detailed financial information provided by diaries is needed to understand the choices that small firm owners make and the real barriers to growth they face,” said Timothy Ogden, Managing Director at the Financial Access Initiative.
FAI and its partners are working closely with local organizations that will be involved in the research to obtain country-level research and ethics approvals in each of the six countries that will host the study.
Methodology of The Small Firm Diaries Research Initiative
Project researchers will follow a group of 100 businesses in multiple sites in each country over a period of 12 months, visiting them several times per month to collect quantitative data on cash flows, and qualitative data on business owners’ aspirations and decision-making.
Compared to traditional research studies that produce static snapshots from a single point in time, financial diaries can produce nuanced and dynamic portraits of firm owners and their choices.
High-frequency, quantitative data on cash flows shows researchers actual trade-offs and decisions made in near-real time, and qualitative data collection allows them to probe deeply to understand the “why” behind those choices, revealing the behaviors and barriers that prevent firms from adopting useful tools and technologies, hamper firm growth, and slow market development.
The study will illuminate the ebbs and flows of the businesses, the markets they serve, the constraints to their productivity, profitability and growth, the impact of access (or lack of access) to technology and formal credit, the interactions of the cash flows of the business with the cash flows of the owners and employees, and much more.
The Small Firm Diaries has also received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Argidius Foundation, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, and Australian National University.
The project’s overall research design is based on the experience of FAI and its research partners with previous financial diaries studies, such as Portfolios of the Poor, the US Financial Diaries, and the Bangladesh Garment Worker Diaries.
The advisory board for the multi-country study will include leading researchers on small firms and practitioners with expertise in digital and financial services and business support programs, with experience spanning the private sector, government, and academia.
Current board members include: Tamara Cook, CEO, FSD-Kenya; Matthew Guttentag, Director of Research & Impact at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs; Machal Karim, Executive, Development Impact at CDC; Leora Klapper, Lead Economist at the World Bank and founder of the Global Findex; and David McKenzie, Lead Economist within the Development Research Group at the World Bank.
The Small Firm Diaries is a collaboration led by the Financial Access Initiative at NYU Wagner, with independent researchers at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and Oxford University; research implementation partners L-IFT, MFO, and EDI Global; and local partners, including the University of the South Pacific (Fiji), SMERU (Indonesia), National Bureau of Statistics and Lagos Business School (Nigeria), and FSDU (Uganda).
Telecommunications operators have resumed full SIM swap and related services following a four-week nationwide outage linked to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)’s migration to a new verification platform.
The outage rendered millions of subscribers unable to perform SIM-related tasks such as swaps, replacements, and activations.
Operators in the industry say the disruption began on June 26, 2025 when telcos temporarily halted SIM registrations and swaps due to unforeseen technical challenges during the transition to NIMC’s upgraded identity verification system.
The migration was mandated to enhance the integrity and efficiency of national identity management but caused major service interruptions across all Nigerian networks.
However, July 21, both MTN and Airtel confirmed via their social media handles that SIM swap services have now fully resumed.
MTN announced: “SIM swaps have now resumed. We can confirm that NIMC services are fully operational and appreciate their support in the migration to a new platform for NIN verification services for the telecommunications industry.
In a public update issued via its MTN Nigeria Support handle on X (formerly Twitter), MTN confirmed that SIM swaps have now resumed.
Telecom operators complained that the portal was unreliable or inaccessible, which resulted in the suspension of SIM swaps, number porting, and new SIM registrations, even though NIMC maintained that the platform was operating as intended.
Unexpected technical difficulties arose during the switch to the new platform, according to the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria.
Real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and network migration was impacted by these issues.
“Unexpected technical difficulties have surfaced, impacting real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and porting, following a recent directive from the National Identity Management Commission mandating Mobile Network Operators to transit to a new identity verification platform,” ALTON stated in a previous joint statement signed by Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, and Damian Udeh, publicity secretary.
The World Bank has affirmed that 84 per cent of adults in low-and middle-income economies, including Nigeria, own personal mobile phones.
The bank in its Global Findex 2025 report said mobile phone ownership was widespread and nearly everywhere. It said data from the Global Findex 2025 Digital Connectivity Tracker, revealed that “86 per cent of adults worldwide, and 84 per cent of adults in low- and middle-income economies, own personal mobile phones.”
The report pointed out that mobile phones and the internet had become widespread and essential to daily life in every economy around the world.
A earlier overview had indicated that Nigeria had a high mobile phone penetration rate, with estimates around 85 per cent to 87 per cent in 2024.
This translates to over 200 million mobile connections, making Nigeria a leading market in Africa for mobile phone ownership and usage. While the overall penetration is high, there’s a growing trend towards smartphone adoption, with forecasts predicting over 140 million smartphone users by 2025.
According to DataReporter, a total of 150 million cellular mobile connections were active in Nigeria in early 2025, with this figure equivalent to 64.0 per cent of the total population.
However, note that some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may not include access to the internet.
There were 107 million individuals using the internet in Nigeria at the start of 2025, when online penetration stood at 45.4 percent. Nigeria was home to 38.7 million social media user identities in January 2025, equating to 16.4 percent of the total population.
These headline stats offer a great overview of the “state of digital” in Nigeria at the start of 2025, but in order to make sense of how digital trends and behaviours have been evolving over time, we need to dig deeper into the data.
According to the World Bank, “as of 2024, individual ownership of mobile phones reached 86 per cent of adults worldwide.
“For many people, barely an hour goes by without their using a mobile device to make a call, ext a friend, read the news, access business information, post a meme on social media, pay for something, play a game, engage with a colleague or a customer, or search for information.
“As access to and use of digitally connected technologies increase, people, businesses, and governments place an increasingly high priority on online interactions. “Digitally connected technologies have clear, well-documented benefits.”
It further highlighted that access to mobile phones and the internet was associated with reduced poverty, increased consumption, and more employment for individuals in lowand middle-income economies.
“Women also experience these benefits, as internet access enables access to flexible jobs3 and has been shown to increase female labor force participation. “Mobile phones also facilitate information sharing.
For instance, in agricultural contexts, farmers’ access to real-time prices and buyer demand data can inform their decisions on where to sell, enhancing market efficiency and reducing the distances they would otherwise travel to get the best return for their product and time.
“Internet access also helps create jobs and aids individuals and countries in exporting goods and services,” it added. The World Bank further noted that owning a mobile phone furthermore enabled financial access through mobile money and other mobile financial services.
It added that these financial accounts and services, typically offered by mobile network operators or fintech firms and accessed via networks of local agents, were associated with lower rates of poverty, increased consumption and savings,and greater resilience to economic shocks.
Sophos, a global leader of innovative security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, today announced that it has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP), marking the 16th consecutive time the company has received this recognition.
Sophos has been recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) since the inaugural publication for this category in 2007.
Sophos’ market-leading endpoint security solutions include Sophos Endpoint powered by Intercept X, Sophos Extended Detection and Response (EDR/XDR), and Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR).
Over 300,000 organizations trust Sophos endpoint security solutions to defend against cyberthreats, including advanced remote ransomware attacks and active adversaries.
Unique to Sophos, the solution includes adaptive defenses that automatically disrupt attackers by dynamically adjusting protection levels based on threat context.
“Sophos’ strength lies in its prevention-first strategy, designed to stop breaches before they start, adapt defenses in real time, and strengthen detection and response when it matters most,” said Kyle Falkenhagen, SVP, Product Management, Sophos. “We believe that receiving this recognition in the highly competitive endpoint security market for 16 consecutive reports reflects our relentless focus on developing innovative solutions that stay ahead of the global threat landscape and the adversaries we face every day.”
Sophos and Secureworks: The future of protection, detection, and response
Following Sophos’ acquisition of Secureworks in February 2025, combining two leading and complementary portfolios to offer a comprehensive suite of solutions for small, midmarket and enterprise organizations.
Secureworks Taegis XDR customers can use Sophos Endpoint to elevate their cyber defenses, at no additional charge, delivering both improved protection and return on investment.
The integration of Secureworks also adds a new Counter Threat Unit (CTU) to the Sophos X-Ops advanced threat response joint task force, further expanding the rich threat intelligence that informs all customers’ defenses.
Backed by Sophos’ advanced security technologies and a broad network of intelligence contacts and partners, the CTU plays a critical role in identifying and tracking threat actors and analyzing anomalous activity, uncovering new attack techniques, threats, and major shifts in the threat landscape.
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