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The theme of this year’s Financial Inclusion Week is how new products and partnerships can enable financial inclusion. Promoting inclusion is not only the right thing to do, but it’s also critical to the future of business. A good example can be found in the joint report by Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and the Institute for International Finance, entitled "How Financial Institutions and Fintechs are Partnering for Inclusion: Lessons from the Frontlines". The report recognizes Mastercard's collaboration with Kopo Kopo, a fintech start-up, and Diamond Trust Bank. They managed to create a QR-payment ecosystem in Kenya that allows customers to pay with their phones, by simply taking a photo of a QR code and manually entering the transaction amount.

Commonwealth Bank and Mastercard announced a collaboration to better financial inclusion for Indonesian women. This collaboration will have three key pillars: enhancing formal networks by knowledge exchange among women-owned businesses, innovating through new digital learning tools and investing in research. Early in 2017, Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) released a research showing that Indonesia’s financial literacy and inclusion indices stood at 29.66% and 67.82%. OJK called upon the industry to implement inclusion programmes to achieve their target of 75% for the financial inclusion index by 2019. Commonwealth Bank and Mastercard will help drive the growth of women-owned businesses by educating them about customer and market trends. Additionally, both will invest in research to continue the conversation about financial inclusion.

MasterCard partnered with Al-Arafah Islami Bank to launch the MasterCard Islamic debit, credit and prepaid cards in Bangladesh. five new MasterCard cards will be added to the bank's repertoire. The cards will offer the lowest monthly compliance fees, 50 days without any additional charges, along with discounts at over 600 merchants and vendors. Jamilur Reza Choudhury, vice-chancellor of Asia Pacific University, attended the launching ceremony as the chief guest along with Badiur Rahman, chairman of Al-Arafah Islami Bank, and Syed Mohammad Kamal, country manager of MasterCard Bangladesh.