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Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have largely focused on urban markets, leaving the rural poor underserved. The high costs of serving rural markets has often been identified as the key impediment to serving these markets, resulting in saturation and heavy competition in urban markets while poor rural clients remain unserved. In this paper, we provide evidence from a sample of over 10,000 microfinance loans in Malawi, that the cost argument has an important flaw. Results show that client retention, a critical aspect of financial sustainability, is significantly higher in rural markets. In addition to being a key financial indicator in an industry where annual client exit rates can exceed 50 percent, client retention is also a key measure of social impact. By operating in rural markets, MFIs may be able to increase both social impact and financial performance.

Despite the worldwide strides in advancing financial inclusion amongst the youth, a significant percentage of the population is still financially disadvantaged. While traditional banks have long offered basic financial services to the younger generations, a further opportunity has been spotted to provide better and slicker digital banking to tech-savvy kids and teenagers. This chapter summarises the ongoing development of Digital Youth Banking while highlighting its latest trends. It then explores challenges and opportunities relating to digital youth banking from the accessibility, practicability, and sustainability perspectives. This chapter further presents three exemplary cases to highlight the unleashed potential of digital youth banking from the traditional bank, neobank, and fintech points of view before setting out a series of recommendations to ramp up the endeavours towards financial inclusion of young people in society.