Procurement Notices

The Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) is a global initiative founded by Citi Foundation/Citigroup, Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network, USAID and Visa Inc. which aims to accelerate the shift from cash to electronic payments in order to advance financial inclusion, help people build savings and provide a more efficient, transparent and often safer means of disbursing payments. The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) serves as secretariat for the BTCA.

 

The initiative provides programme partners with the expertise and resources they need to make the transition from cash to electronic payments and achieve the shared goals of empowering people and growing emerging economies. While physical cash payments are more effective than distributing in-kind goods, there is a grow­ing body of evidence that digitizing payments can create lasting benefits for people, communities and economies, such as cost savings, transparency, security, financial inclusion and, new market access.

 

Additionally, advances in communication technology and network capacities have led to innovative and target­ed ways of reaching even the most rural areas to use mobile devices, smart cards and other elec­tronic methods. While there are geographic regions and certain operations for which a transition is not yet possible, research suggests that billions in government funding, development assistance and private sector cash payments are potentially appropriate for the shift to electronic.

 

BTCA will advocate for and support the use of all forms of electronic pay­ments where they provide a superior payment option to cash, regardless of the particular technol­ogy or mode of transmission The Better than Cash Alliance (BTCA) aims through an advocacy strategy to generate commitments among governments, private sector companies and development organizations to shift from cash to electronic payments and join the Alliance. The goals by the end of 2014 are for at least 15 stakeholders with significant cash payment streams to have joined the Alliance and more broadly to have contributed to a global movement for the shift from cash to electronic payments. To generate commitments, BTCA advocacy strategy will focus on 22 priority country targets and their eco-systems in Africa, Latin America and Asia, with a focus on the governments and then private sector companies and development organizations active in that country. BTCA aims to focus not only on engaging with primary targets that can become members of the Alliance but also with secondary targets (professional networks, influential peers, representatives from the global electronic payments eco-system, etc.) that can influence the primary targets.

 

The firm under the supervision of the BTCA Programme Manager and working very closely with the BTCA Communications Specialist will support BTCA to design an advocacy strategy for each of the 22 priority country targets so as to raise awareness on the shift when necessary, demonstrate the importance of the shift for the various targets involved at the eco-system level and bring them to committing to the Alliance. To achieve that goal, the firm will conduct a scoping study to understand how to reach and influence BTCA’s key targets and to design specific tactics to convince them to join the Alliance.