Digital finance constitutes a market with enormous potential, but whose development is specifically dependent on the confidence built by the consumer in the various products it offers.
While consumer advocates recognize the vast potential of digital finance to create opportunities for all, digital financial services have created new risks while exacerbating traditional ones, potentially leading to unsatisfactory or even unfair outcomes for consumers. consumers. And everything suggests that these risks have increased in recent years.
In this sense, the various consumer rights groups are calling, on the occasion of World Consumer Rights Day, for fair digital finance. According to them, the rapid evolution of digital financial services demonstrates the need for innovative regulatory approaches and digital financial services and products centered on consumer protection and empowerment.
Approached by MAP, Ouadie Madih, president of the National Federation of Consumer Associations in Morocco (FNAC), said the federation joins Consumers International and its 200 member organizations around the world to raise awareness among consumers around the world. to fair digital finance.
World Consumer Rights Day is an opportunity to call on businesses, governments and policy makers to ensure that digital finance is inclusive, ensuring access for all, and safe, mitigating the harm caused by scams, fraud and phishing in this area, Madih said.
It is also about ensuring that this digital finance is confidential and data protective, but also sustainable in the sense that it guarantees ecological and socially responsible digital financial products, he said.
Digital technologies are reshaping payments, lending, insurance and wealth management everywhere, becoming a key tool for consumers of financial services, he stressed, citing the example of digital banking consumers who should exceed, by 2024, 3.6 billion.
According to Madih, the proportion of account owners using digital transactions increased from 57% in 2014 to 70% in 2017 in developing countries, noting that more companies are creating digital financial products based on technology to meet these demands and 39% of businesses are making fintech adoption a high priority.
He also mentioned the regulatory aspect in terms of consumer protection, noting that the establishment of a consumer code is currently desired or even necessary.
According to him, the laws challenge the legislator and the public authorities to put in place a consumer code which brings together all the laws and sectors in order to ensure that the interests of consumers are safeguarded. It is a question of putting in place a consumer code that meets the requirements of new practices and new consumer habits in a context where digitalization is advancing rapidly and where laws must follow.
Mr. Madih also insisted on the importance of consumer protection in this current context marked by the rise in prices on an international scale, considering him as the main actor in the development of the economies of nations.
Every year on March 15, consumer rights groups come together to highlight an urgent issue facing consumers around the world. This year’s chosen theme “Fair Digital Finance” is an opportunity for the global consumer movement to harness the opportunities of emerging digital financial products, highlighting what fair digital finance means to the everyday consumer.
Source: MAP
