Ling Hai, Co-president of MasterCard's Asia-Pacific Region

Economic growth has always been the yardstick for business managers and policy makers to measure success, which has also driven human society to make great progress: We have realized globalization and economic transformation, improved efficiency and created new opportunities by embracing cutting-edge technology. As a result, millions of people have lifted themselves out of poverty and rekindled their hopes for a better life.

However, the dividends of economic growth are not equal. At present, billions of people around the world are still outside the coverage of the Internet and have never had bank accounts; Under the tide of automation and globalization, millions of working people are facing the threat of unemployment; The uneven distribution of social wealth and development opportunities also makes people increasingly negative.

With the acceleration of technological evolution, the challenges faced by governments are becoming more and more complex. For private enterprises, instead of waiting for the government to solve the problem, it is better to make full use of their own efforts to redefine economic growth, make it more inclusive and better benefit a wider range of social groups.

To promote inclusive growth, MasterCard has been committed to empowering three major social groups around the world. They are: 1.7 billion people excluded from the mainstream financial system, millions of "laggards" in the digital wave, and an increasing number of workers who lack new labor skills.

Investment in small and medium-sized enterprises is the key to help these three groups. This is more prominent in Asia. As a major part of the economies of Asian countries, small and medium-sized enterprises are the main driving force to promote economic growth. Small and medium-sized enterprises also need to bring these vulnerable groups into economic activities in order to achieve commercial success. Moreover, small and medium-sized enterprises also have a better understanding of the specific local situation and know how to provide support and help these marginalized groups in a most appropriate way.

However, if we want to develop the potential of small and medium-sized enterprises to strengthen the inclusiveness of economic growth, there is an urgent need to strengthen the recognition between private enterprises and the public sector in the areas of responsibility, innovation and cooperation.

Inclusive Finance is not difficult to understand: if a migrant worker has no bank account and can only rely on cash, she may spend $10 service charge for every $100 she sends home. At the same time, inclusive finance should not stop at providing bank accounts, but need to cover the use of financial instruments for investment savings, insurance purchases and bill payments. For small and medium-sized enterprises, if they only have bank accounts while cannot obtain low-cost loans for business operation, technology investment and staff training, such "finance" is obviously not very "inclusive".

Promoting the development of emerging payment technologies to bring more people into the digital financial system is a major step forward to strengthen inclusiveness. This includes low-cost and instant payment services, as well as emerging digital banking platforms that can widely cover vulnerable and marginalized groups.

Expanding the connotation of digital financial service ecology is not only helpful to promote inclusive finance, but also beneficial to enterprise financing. From employee compensation to corporate payment, digitally recorded enterprise transactions can be used as credit documents to obtain more financing opportunities. In the long run, with the increase of inclusiveness, small and medium-sized enterprises are bound to improve the professionalism on investment behavior and enterprise management.

To this end, innovators committed to inclusive finance are trying to build a series of financial platforms for "special" small and medium-sized enterprises with non-traditional credit risk assessment mechanisms. In Kenya, MasterCard and Unilever developed the Kionet platform. By integrating inventory data and sales data, Kionect can provide microfinance suggestions to Kenya Commercial Banks to better meet the capital needs of self-employed households.

For the capital needs of global small and medium-sized enterprises, we expect that there is still a gap of $5.2 trillion, of which more than half are concentrated in East Asia and the Pacific. This funding gap is in urgent need for innovative technology to fill.

In 2017, more than 90% of people in India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Laos never tried to pay bills or shop through the Internet. With the popularity of mobile phones, this number is declining, but the speed is very slow.

At present, many small and medium-sized enterprises are still relying on paper account books to manage enterprises. This manual process, which needs digital transformation, not only wastes a lot of time, but also hinders the development of cross-border trade.

Enhancing the digital inclusiveness for ordinary people and enterprises is crucial to economic growth. The continuous enrichment of digital ecology can breed more diversified development opportunities for people living in it. With the deeper application of social media and emerging technologies, small and medium-sized enterprises will not only be better at tapping the potential of e-commerce, but also their employees, customers and markets will integrate more smoothly into the current digital wave.

To promote digital inclusive growth, private enterprises and the public sector must work together to increase investment in technologies and tools. In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Info-communications Media Development Authority have cooperated with MasterCard and other enterprises to launch the "Business Sans Borders" initiative, hoping to help small and medium-sized enterprises digitize their supply chains and improve the efficiency of cross-border trade. Such innovation platforms are also emerging in the whole region driven by strong demand.

Most of us often rely on wage income to make a living. However, compared with capital income, wage income not only has higher tax burden, but also does not usually have enough liquidity to pursue investment opportunities. Especially when the working environment changes, such as the impact of artificial intelligence and automation, wages are more vulnerable.

The third category of the above-mentioned three marginal groups, namely workers whose labor skills are gradually not needed, is facing great risks at present. Research shows that up to 800 million jobs worldwide will be replaced by 2030, affecting many white-collar industries and developing markets. For example, in Dongguan, Guangdong, many enterprises deployed 91,000 robots, so that 280,000 jobs were cut within five years.

With the flexibility of operation and the ability to absorb idle labor, small and medium-sized enterprises have become a powerful weapon to counter this development trend. There is a start-up in Kentucky called Bit Source. The founder of this coal enterprise is leading the company to train miners to become programmers.

It is true that the current global economic pattern is changing rapidly. But at the same time, the possibility of future career development is unlimited.

In order to tap these possibilities, we need small and medium-sized enterprises to create more opportunities for their markets while carrying out digital innovation. We need leaders from large enterprises to make full use of the large-scale collaboration, research and development and technology that can change the world.

More than that, we also need all global leaders, whether they come from the public sector or private enterprises, to give top priority to inclusive growth. After all, time waits for no man.

This aricle is translated from China Sustainability Tribune.