Fintech for good: How Dock and Parabank are working to enhance disability inclusion in financial services
In our new series spotlighting fintechs making a difference in areas like sustainability, social impact, and financial inclusion, FinTech Futures spoke with Antonio Soares, CEO of Dock, and Gelson Junior, Paralympian and CEO of Parabank, to explore their efforts to expand financial access for disabled people in Brazil.
Dock and Parabank are working together to enhance disability inclusion in financial services
Dock, a payments and banking technology provider serving financial institutions across South America, states it has been “working for over 20 years to democratise access to financial services”, while Parabank, a Brazilian challenger bank, claims to be the “first digital bank in the world made with, by, and for people with disabilities”.
“Banking alone is not inclusion”
We first wrote about the partnership between the two in September, when it was announced that Parabank was adopting Dock’s private-label card processing platform to offer credit and prepaid debit cards tailored to the “purchasing and payment needs of consumers with a wide range of disabilities”.
Speaking on the need to team up, Soares says: “We understood that this joining of forces was important because it is estimated that there are 1.5 million people with disabilities without banking access in Brazil.
“People with disabilities need products and services tailored to their needs. Traditional institutions are unaware of these specific needs and, therefore, they’re not able to offer this level of personalisation.”
Gelson Junior adds that the partnership “combines innovation with accessibility”, claiming the firms saw an opportunity to “form a team” capable of combatting these common issues by leveraging Dock’s technology and Parabank’s “social and inclusive understanding”.
The companies have already begun rolling out adapted products such as braille cards and “specific credit lines for rehabilitation needs”.
Leveraging Dock’s technology, the challenger bank plans to serve as a “financial services hub to assist in physical and financial rehabilitation”, providing services such as financing for prosthetics, complex medical treatments, physiotherapy, and financial support for students pursuing higher education.
Parabank’s CEO and Paralympian, Gelson Junior (Image: LinkedIn)
For Soares, credit is the key challenge to financial inclusion in Brazil: “We have achieved a banking inclusion rate of almost 90% of people, but financial inclusion goes beyond that. We believe that banking alone is not inclusion.
“If we want truly inclusive economic development, we must go beyond promoting digital banking services, and the main challenge today is credit.
“Today in Brazil we believe that the next wave of inclusion is coming, which will be using the Pix rail,” says Soares. Pix is the instant payment system created by the Brazilian central bank which has seen huge growth since its initial release in 2020.
Soares emphasises that “it will not eliminate credit cards, but it will bring people without traditional methods of access to credit”, because it is a “cheaper and disintermediated rail”.
Looking ahead, the duo have ambitious plans to drive financial inclusion in Brazil and beyond.
Gelson Junior says: “We want to take this partnership to new markets, increasing social impact and financial inclusion in other Latin American countries.
“In addition, there are plans to further innovate in financial education, empowering customers to manage their finances independently and efficiently, while continuing improvement processes focused on humanising service and developing new technologies.”
Growing focus on disability inclusion
Project Nemo is aiming to accelerate disability inclusion in fintech
Awareness around disability inclusion in financial services is improving, with firms beginning to address this vital issue. For example, the UK’s Project Nemo, launched this year, is a 12-month campaign aimed at equipping the fintech sector with the knowledge and tools needed to foster greater inclusion for individuals with disabilities.
Speaking to FinTech Futures in May, Joanne Dewar, former CEO of Thredd and head of Project Nemo, pointed out that fintechs are ideally placed to address disability inclusion, given their role as “architects of the future of financial services” and “because we are innovative, because we are early adopters, and because we are fast-moving”.
To find out more about how global fintechs are looking to enhance financial inclusion, check out this article on the topic.
