"Digital financial services also advance the third G20 Principle for Innovative Financial Inclusion, which advocates the use of technological and institutional innovations to expand access to financial services," the report stated.

Two of the report's contributors – Leora Klapper, lead economist, development research group for World Bank and Ruth Goodwin-Groen, managing director for the Better Than Cash Alliance – provided additional insight in a Gallup article.

"Digital financial services can boost economic participation for the more than two billion people worldwide who currently lack access to formal financial services," Klapper and Goodwin-Groen wrote. "Most are women, who don't have bank accounts due to several reasons: The high cost of opening or operating an account, inaccessible location of the bank branch or a lack of government-issued identification documents required to open an account. Digital financial services can help women overcome these challenges."

Digital financial services also allow women to bank from the convenience of their homes or workplaces and avoid traveling to distant branches, the report noted, citing women in rural Malawi and Nigeria who have begun using mobile phones to make deposits and withdrawals through a network of agents. These women find mobile banking convenient, and for female farmers in Niger, mobile money transfers have led to improved financial autonomy, as mobile transfers are less noticeable to family members. An increase in privacy and control also helps them invest in their businesses, earn higher returns and boost their labor force participation.

The benefits of digital financial inclusion give governments, businesses, financial services companies, development organizations and donors a good reason to do their part, the report noted.

"Governments can digitize their own wage and government transfer payments to women to drive financial inclusion, advance customer protection frameworks to help protect women with low financial literacy, and reform discriminatory laws that harshly affect women, such as restrictions on women's inheritance and land ownership," it stated.

The private and financial sectors can also play a role in achieving digital financial inclusion. Businesses can digitize their wage payments to female workers and suppliers, allow female customers to make digital payments and improve customer support to make it easier for women to use digital financial services. The financial sector can develop alternative credit-scoring models to address the reality that many women lack a formal financial transaction history, and design products and services to meet women's needs and preferences.

The report also suggested digital financial services can increase female labor force participation, including remote work from their homes or other places in their communities.