ITU Focus Group on Digital Financial Services has published two further reports as it seeks to develop an international framework of good practice guidelines for regulators, operators and providers in the telecom and financial services sectors. It has now released two new reports: one on regulation in the DFS ecosystem and another on consumer protection.

The Focus Group Paper ‘Regulation in the Digital Financial Services Ecosystem’ identifies categories of regulation and addresses a number of issues relating to managing the regulatory environment. It includes an analysis of how regulators currently work together and provides a model memorandum of understanding that national regulators can adopt to formalise their collaboration and interaction in view of co-regulating the DFS marketplace.

Consequently the Focus Group Paper ‘Commonly identified Consumer Protection themes for Digital Financial Services’ identifies four common themes that policy makers or regulators may want to consider when developing laws, regulations or guidelines around consumer protection. This includes provision of information and transparency, fraud prevention, dispute resolution and data privacy and protection.

The Focus Group is continuing its work and will publish its next set of research papers after its upcoming meeting in September 2016 in Tanzania focussing on the work of the four Working Groups:  DFS Ecosystem, Consumer Experience & Protection, Interoperability and Technology, Innovation & Competition.

Source: ITU