Trust by design: A user protection framework designed to support financial health

User protection is becoming a growth imperative. Stronger safeguards can turn digital access into confident, sustained use, helping people and small businesses build lasting financial health.

Digital financial services are opening new pathways to save, pay, borrow and receive funds. But in a crowded and fast-moving digital economy, access is only the starting point. Trust is an important factor in helping people adopt, engage with and continue using digital financial services.

The Global Financial Health Coalition’s User Protection Framework helps organizations design that trust into the digital financial experience. It offers practical principles that can strengthen confidence, improve user outcomes and create more resilient, inclusive ecosystems.

As digital footprints expand and new technologies reshape financial services, users expect experiences that are clear, secure and responsive when something goes wrong. Transparency, responsible data use, clear recourse and strong fraud protections are no longer optional trust signals, they are core to sustained engagement.

For consumers and small businesses, trusted experiences can build confidence to transact more often, use digital tools more fully and participate more actively in the formal economy.

The framework focuses on four foundations for building trust at scale: transparency, data responsibility, user recourse and rights, and security, fraud and scam protection. Together, they help organizations make digital financial experiences easier to understand, safer to use and more resilient by design.

That means embedding protection into the moments that matter most, from onboarding and consent to payments, dispute resolution and recovery, so users know what to expect, what they control and where to turn for support.

Trust can be a powerful engine for growth. Organizations that embed protection across the user journey may strengthen adoption, deepen engagement, reduce drop-off and build more durable customer relationships.

For people and small businesses new to digital financial services, trusted experiences may help unlock greater usage, stronger financial behaviors and broader economic opportunity.

The framework calls on providers and ecosystem partners to move from principle to practice by adopting shared standards, identifying high-risk moments and measuring trust as a business and user outcome.

For the Global Financial Health Coalition, this work reflects a simple belief: user protection is fundamental to financial health. When people and small businesses can use financial tools safely, confidently and consistently, they may make progress towards long term financial health.