How a global development firm and a Silicon Valley-born venture studio are building inclusive fintech from the ground up

In the Philippines, roughly 50 million people — nearly half the adult population — don’t have a bank account. No savings account, no credit history, no easy way to send or receive money beyond cash handed from one person to another. For these individuals, participating in the modern economy isn’t just difficult. It’s practically impossible.

It’s the kind of problem that’s easy to acknowledge and incredibly hard to solve. Financial inclusion has been a development priority for decades, yet the gap persists — not because of a lack of ambition, but because of the sheer complexity of reaching people who live far from bank branches, earn irregular incomes, and have little reason to trust institutions that have never served them.

Now, an unlikely partnership between a global development consulting firm and a Silicon Valley-born venture studio is attempting something different: building fintech solutions designed specifically for the communities that traditional financial systems have left behind.

Where Development Meets Venture Building

In 2023, Chemonics International,  one of the world’s largest sustainable development firms,  announced a $5 million investment in Talino Venture Studios, an award-winning global venture studio specializing in inclusive fintech. The partnership brought together two organizations with very different DNA but a shared conviction: that technology, built the right way, could close the financial inclusion gap for millions.

“Innovation happens with smart investments and smart partnerships,” said Chemonics President and CEO Jamey Butcher. “Talino has a proven record of developing high-impact technology and combined with Chemonics’ access to local leaders and deep expertise gained from our work in nearly 100 countries, we can create groundbreaking, scalable solutions with the potential to help millions.”

For Chemonics, the investment represented something larger than a single deal. Founded in 1975, the firm has spent nearly five decades implementing development programs across more than 100 countries, with over 6,000 experts on the ground — 90 percent of whom work in communities they’ve long called home. But in recent years, Chemonics has been evolving. The firm has been expanding its capabilities in applied technology, venture building, and private sector partnerships, complementing its deep field expertise with the tools and approaches of the tech world.

Talino, for its part, brought a track record of building inclusive fintech companies from the ground up. Born at the intersection of Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia, the studio had already launched ventures like BayaniPay, Asenso, Earnie, and Saphron — each designed to serve underrepresented communities with financial tools built around their actual needs.

“Our partnership with Chemonics signifies a pivotal moment in sustainable innovation,” said Talino CEO Winston Damarillo. “With a history of successful transformations and ventures and a commitment to people-first innovation, we’re devoted to closing the financial inclusion gap for the underserved individuals and communities in emerging nations worldwide.”

Roots in the Philippines

The partnership didn’t come out of nowhere. Chemonics and Damarillo first worked together in 2020 through the USAID E-PESO Activity, a project designed to increase the adoption of electronic payments across the Philippines. That initiative demonstrated something critical: that digital financial tools could gain traction in the Philippine market when designed with local context and local trust at the center.

Building on that foundation, the Chemonics-Talino partnership turned its attention to a more ambitious goal — creating a pioneering inclusive instant payment system for the Philippines. The result was Higala, a fintech startup purpose-built to serve the country’s unbanked and underbanked population.

In late 2025, Higala closed a $4 million seed funding round, a milestone that validated the model and signaled growing investor confidence in inclusive fintech as both a social good and a viable business.

The name itself carries meaning. “Higala” is a Visayan word meaning “friend” — a fitting name for a platform designed to meet people where they are and help them access financial services for the first time.

A Different Kind of Innovation

What makes the Chemonics-Talino approach distinctive isn’t just the technology. It’s the combination of capabilities behind it.

Chemonics brings decades of on-the-ground experience in some of the world’s most complex operating environments. The firm has used drone technology to deliver medical lab samples in hard-to-reach areas of Malawi, developed technology-based conservation systems in the Philippines, and built intelligent supply chains that move life-saving commodities across continents. This isn’t a company experimenting with technology from a distance — it’s one that has deployed it in the field, at scale, in places where failure has real human consequences.

Talino brings the venture-building methodology — the ability to move fast, test assumptions, and build products that can scale commercially while staying rooted in social impact. Together, the two organizations represent a model that’s still rare in the development sector: one that combines the rigor and reach of a global implementer with the speed and product thinking of a startup studio.

“While Talino’s ventures are built on Filipino innovation, our partnership with Chemonics enables us to go beyond the Filipino diaspora and make a positive impact on the lives of many more people,” Damarillo said.

Why It Matters Beyond the Philippines

The Philippines is the proving ground, but the ambition extends well beyond it. Financial exclusion is a global challenge — the World Bank estimates that roughly 1.4 billion adults worldwide remain unbanked. The Chemonics-Talino partnership is explicitly designed to create solutions that can be adapted and scaled into other low-income economies.

For Chemonics, this venture represents a broader strategic shift. The firm has been building out its applied technology capabilities, investing in ventures and partnerships that sit at the intersection of development expertise and commercial innovation. The Higala investment is part of a portfolio approach — one that includes Alchemi Venture Studio and a growing ecosystem of tech-enabled products designed to deliver impact at scale.

It’s a model that challenges the conventional boundaries between the development sector and the private sector. And if Higala’s early traction is any indication, it’s a model that works.

The 50 million unbanked Filipinos aren’t a statistic to be solved with a single app or a single investment. They represent millions of individual lives — workers sending money home, small business owners trying to grow, families saving for the future. Reaching them requires more than good intentions. It requires the kind of deep local knowledge, technological capability, and long-term commitment that few organizations can bring to the table.

With Higala, Chemonics and Talino are proving they might be among the few that can.