Invisible Giant
A wallet built on the postal network.
The Global South does not always build the rail from scratch. Sometimes it switches on the public network that was already everywhere.
The fastest new rail in Bangladesh was laid on the oldest network in the country.
Dhaka, 2019. The Bangladesh Post Office launched Nagad as a state-backed mobile financial service, building the wallet on a postal network that already reached every village. It grew into the country's second-largest mobile-money service, serving tens of millions of customers, with a public mandate to reach the people the banks had left out.
The decision that mattered: build the wallet on the public network that was already everywhere, not from a standing start.
The Global South switches on the infrastructure it already has.
Source: Bangladesh Post Office, 2019; Nagad; Future Startup, 2025.