Delivering on the Savings Promise of Mobile Money
People’s savings goals generally relate to future payments they would like to make: for school fees, housing, weddings, working capital for trading activities or health emergencies. By planning payments, households can seek to stabilize their daily circumstances, develop opportunities to improve their condition in the future, and mitigate shocks that can set their families back. Thus, the notions of savings, payments and budgeting are inextricably linked.
Yet most savings services available to the poor do not link these three elements. Budgeting is often treated as a financial education matter, not directly facilitated by savings products. And the basic accounts of many banks and financial coops often stand in splendid isolation, offering few if any payment benefits.
The innovation of mobile money has been to put payments as the first rung in the ladder of financial inclusion, but now we are observing that the step from sending and receiving money in real time to storing value over time looms large for most users. Budgeting tools may be a missing link in mobile money. To make mobile money services more relevant, they need to be packaged as elements of a broader savings proposition based around helping people budget for today and plan for tomorrow. This should accommodate the mental models that they already use today, just with better tools.
Mobile phones offer a special opportunity for integrating savings, payment and budgeting tools seamlessly for the client. The phone offers a level of immediacy and interactivity that no other kind of banking touch point can deliver. It needs to evolve from being a mere payment instrument (a card and point-of-sale terminal replacement technology) and become a tool that helps people manage their money. The phone can act as a passbook, a calculator, a channel for alerts and reminders – all at your fingertips.
The mobile user interface –the set of screens that people use to handle their finances on a mobile phone—will therefore be a key determinant of how successful mobile money turns out to be in facilitating fuller financial inclusion. How will mobile money providers present the range of budgeting tools, savings options and payment services to their clients? The product challenges in the front end (user interaction on a very limited user interface) will eclipse the traditional challenges in the back end (integration into the core banking system).
Mobile money is not just a cost reduction story; it ought to be a service creation and integration story as well. Mobile phones offer the possibility for banks to maintain a constant presence in their customers’ lives, helping them budget for today and plan for tomorrow.
Also in this Series
Microfinance Should Have Started with Savings
Much of the world is in trouble today because of debt, too much borrowing, presumably not enough saving, by individuals, companies, countries and groups of countries.
Can Collecting Savings in Rural Areas Be Profitable?
The importance and role of savings with respect to the economic and social development of developing countries and of African countries in particular have long been recognized.
Comments
I think mobile banking is
I think mobile banking is great, because it eases the lives of the poor. Its efficiencies are undeniable But we have to ask the question: Does it make poor people less poor? Is “financial inclusion” more than just a convenience in this case? Can it help to affect structural change that will bring people out of poverty? Or is it really being promoted as a new market, a new profit center for technology and cell phone companies? That’s not evil, per se, but it’s different than poverty alleviation.
Widespread mobile banking
Widespread mobile banking will be a massive structural change that will open up all sorts of possibilities for poverty alleviation strategies because, among many examples, it will create a digital identity and history, lower transaction costs and increase the speed of the movement of money which are both particularly disruptive innovations in low infrastructure and rural environments.
I would anticipate that remittances, matched savings, and government payments would be the next round of transactions that could move to mobile platforms.
Ignacio Mas
Ignacio Mas
ny innovative model using technology in particular under Microfinance arena need to focus on the poor segment and should result in poverty reduction. This mobile money, no doubt, would facilitate for the financial institutions for easy out reach and help faster financial inclusion with cost reduction: but at poor client level the question “to what extent does this mobile money facilitate poverty reduction ultimately ?” need to be probed. In such cases, the efficacy of this technology largely hinges on technology education, medium of communication and post sales mobile device services with the given literacy level in remote areas.
Further in poverty segment, the migratory poor laborers in services sector particularly are very much in need of transferring money(wage income) from the place of work to their native villages frequently mainly for the purpose of consumption and financial obligation of their family and also keep some saving protected . I am more interested to know How far does this mobile money could address the problems of these category of the poor ?
Rengarajan
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