Before you send  wealth to Thailand, it is advisable  to find out how your chosen technique will work  for your recipient. For example, if you want to use the popular  prepaid debit card to transfer money to Thailand, you should first make  sure that your recipient can use it easily. Convenience  is typically a deciding factor in how happy your  recipient will be with your gift of money, so your  family member will probably be particularly grateful  if you use a pathway that is agreeable to them.

ATMs in Thailand are spread,  except in rural areas that are far from major  cities. If your recipient lives in a small town,  it is best to ask them if any ATMs or merchants who accept  cards are nearby. If not, it might be best to remit money  to their bank account, or perhaps have them pick up funds  at a specified location. However, most citizens of Thailand  likely have access to ATMs and would find a prepaid debit  card quite useful. When using ATMs, your recipient  will find that the exchange rate is automatic and does not cost additional  money, which is more than can be said for most banks that  offer money transfer services.

Your family should know that most ATMs in Thailand possess  a daily withdrawal limit of 20,000 to 100,000 Thai baht. You should  advise your relative to try to keep some cash on  them at all times since ATMs in the country have a tendency to  break down at night, and are not usually fixed for at least  a day. Also, not every ATM takes every type  of card. Lots of popular prepaid debit cards carry the  MasterCard logo, so your relative should look for that logo  on the ATM before relying on that particular machine to  dispense money.

Though most merchants accept cards, getting  cash out of the ATM is often advised  when possible. This is because many vendors charge  a fee of about two to five percent of the transaction to help them cover  their expenses for having a credit card machine. Though  it is technically illegal to do this in Thailand, a number  of merchants reportedly get away with it, and  it is always best to be ready. Therefore, alert your recipient  that it is advised that they have some cash available  should they encounter a retailer who charges a large  fee.

Remitting  money to Thailand is often  easy with a prepaid debit card, and using this type of card will also  probably be simple for your kin. Just ask before you transfer money to Thailand using this method to ensure that your relative  is okay with using a card. It is likely that they will be  thrilled to be able to receive money on a card  that is so easy to use.

Sending funds  home is often a necessary task, especially if  you have family members depending on you. If  you need to transfer money to Philippines, you might  consider some of the newer routes rather than the older  ones. This involves more dependable technology, like ATMs,  rather than depending on having funds sent to your  recipient’s doorstep or a specific location.  First, you should find out if such technology is the norm in  the area.

The Philippines is known for  being really up-to-date when it comes to technology,  as many of its banks use Internet and cell  phone banking. In fact, many also offer the “Smart Money”  debit card, which is a MasterCard meant to be used in this nation.  Thus, the country and its residents are very  familiar with debit cards and ATMs, so you may consider using  a prepaid debit card to transfer money to Philippines.

As your relative is probably aware of, ATMs  can be found almost everywhere in this  area. They may be attached to banks or independent, and they  are usually open daily. However, some ATMs do  run out of funds, especially on the usual  pay day or on weekends. This means that your recipient should  probably remove money using their prepaid  debit card on weekdays to ensure that they can get funds out  when they need it. Additionally, it is important  for your relative to know that many ATMs feature  a daily limit of about 4000 Philippine pesos when it comes to withdrawals.

Of course, if they cannot remove  money when they want to, they do have the option  of paying bills and buying products with  the prepaid debit card. Since some companies in the area permit  online bill pay, it is possible to type the card numbers online  to pay bills, just as many people in the United States do. Also,  since merchants and residents alike in the Philippines are  used to debit cards, most retailers do accept them. This means  that your recipient can buy groceries, gas, and  other necessities when you transfer money to Philippines using  a prepaid debit card. However, many facilities do charge a fee equal  to about 7.5 percent of the overall transaction when  consumers use a credit or debit card, so your relative  should find out if this is the case before shopping.

Clearly, transferring  cash to Philippines with a debit card is very  possible, and is likely to be convenient for your kin. As long as they know the regulations associated  with ATMs and merchants who accept cards, they should  be satisfied with this technique. Of course, talking to your  relative before you transfer money to Philippines with  a prepaid debit card might be your best bet to make sure they  are comfortable with this method.

As pointed out in our introductory post on International Women’s Day, it is estimated that 70% of the poorest people worldwide are women. Women accomplish two-thirds of the world’s working hours yet they only earn 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property.

An extremely entrenched set of discriminatory attitudes and practices has fostered this situation and jeopardises any attempts at reversing the trend. Women in developing countries are thus trapped in a vicious circle of multiple discrimination related to gender and poverty; as a cause as well as a consequence, they are disproportionately excluded from access to economic resources in general and access to financial services in particular – access that would allow them to durably escape poverty.

Not only are these circumstances appallingly unjust and deserve to be tackled as such, but they also represent a colossal obstacle to development altogether.  

Studies have shown that women’s access to assets have a considerable impact on the welfare of the next generation, since women tend to allocate expenditure to their children’s health care or education to a far greater extend than men do. As a result, research findings have highlighted the fact that women’s income plays a crucial role in keeping their households above the poverty level.

If access to formal financial services is extremely limited in developing countries – less than half of the population is banked, with the percentage falling below 10% in several Sub-Saharan African countries – this limitation weighs all the more down on women. Not only do they face discriminative practices, but their disadvantaged economic situations make them less able to meet collateral requirements and to provide guarantees based on assets. Furthermore, the fact that the majority of them work in the informal sector means particularly irregular and insecure income to the commercial banking sector (see research findings on Africa and specific studies on Uganda and Bangladesh).

The emergence of microfinance therefore stood out as a unique opportunity for women to find their way out of this deadlock.

And indeed, close ties have linked microfinance to women, from the inception of the first microfinance programmes up to now, when women still represent 80% of microfinance clients. A large proportion of programmes have deliberately targeted women in order to obtain the beneficial multiplier effect generated by their access to financial resources.

A number of research studies have highlighted the positive impact that women’s access to microcredit had on their households, through improving their income as well as their access to health care, education or housing.

Women’s potential economic empowerment appears as the most direct outcome of access to microfinance, since they may be enabled to start or increase economic activities, as well as enhance their participation and control over their household’s income and expenditure. Consequently, women will be in a position to invest in their family’s welfare, particularly in their children’s nutrition, health care and education, while often balancing discrimination suffered by girls in doing so.

As a result, certain microfinance initiatives even engendered the emergence of broader political empowerment for women. Organisations like SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) in India have led to the promotion of women’s participation in unions and local political bodies, similar to CARE-Niger, which has urged women to run in local elections.

Nevertheless, these results are not direct and systematic outcomes of access to financial services. Successful programmes such as SEWA or Grameen Bank have implemented additional initiatives specifically tailored to tackle gender issues and to empower women. Group-based financial services, for instance, have proved to be more effective, since they can constitute a powerful mobilisation tool and provide a grassroots base for collective action. More elaborate schemes include direct educational and awareness-raising training destined to promote gender empowerment.

But such advocacy-oriented programmes might be threatened by the trend towards commercialisation of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Findings from a Women’s World Banking study show that regulated MFIs were less likely to lend to women (a drop of almost 30% over a five-year period for MFIs who had morphed into regulated institutions) and seemingly to poor people as well. Not only commercialised do MFIs not focus as much on women as microfinance originally does, but as profit-seeking institutions they naturally tend to turn away from implementing design features and advocacy initiatives that address gender constraints, and certain experts such as Linda Mayoux already observe that “gender advocacy in […] crucial areas has disappeared off the agenda of the microfinance movement.”

Indeed MFIs should not lose sight of the specific and most urgent needs of women in accessing financial services. In this respect, microinsurance appears as a key area destined to gain in prominence.

Almost 80% of the world’s 1.2 billion poor people live in rural areas. Most of them are small-scale farmers and an overwhelming majority has no access to formal financial or microfinance services. Their remote situation and the fact that they are often scattered across vast regions lead them to be even more underserved than the average population of developing countries. Yet they are most vulnerable to contingencies in their economic activities. They remain continuously at the mercy of drops in market prices or potential droughts and will have to cope with ever-increasing challenges related to climate change.

Women represent a large proportion of this population and are responsible for 70% of the food production in developing countries – 80 % in Africa. Nevertheless they face disproportionate constraints in their agricultural activities due to discriminative practises relating to land tenure, inheritance rights or unequal access to land markets. Numerous additional issues make this category of women particularly vulnerable and specifically adapted microinsurance products and services necessary: for instance the fact that women are traditionally confined to grow subsistence crops – as opposed to cash crops, which are more profitable; that they usually care for the members of the family who fall ill, or that due to their perceived relative physical weakness they tend to more often be the victims of theft and crime in general (see this study).

As the consequences of the current global crisis continue to fully unfold in developing countries, it seems necessary to call to mind the enduring vulnerability experienced by women, as well as the central role they play in sustaining their household in times of hardships. Benefits related to microfinance never occur in an automatic manner, it is all the more true for women clients who have to overcome numerous impediments. Microfinance providers simply cannot overlook the necessity to mainstream the gender perspective into all stages and levels of their activities.