Abstract
Mobile money has grown rapidly in the past few years. It has contributed to greater financial inclusion for the poor and unbanked, bringing millions of people into a formal financial system. Despite the increased use of mobile money, little research has focused on non-profits’ preparedness to mobile money adoption. This article explores staff perceptions regarding mobile money at a large Bangladeshi non-profit. The objective of the study was to understand staff and clients’ opinions about using mobile money specifically focusing on reliability, efficiency, and quality. In this qualitative study, we focused on five projects and conducted a total of 11 focus group discussions and 50 in-depth interviews. We found staffs and clients were amenable to using mobile money. Most people felt that using mobile money could reduce the workload, save time and money, and make life easier for both staffs and clients. However, significant client adoption barriers exist including client literacy and numeracy levels, a lack of national identity cards and challenges obtaining them, poor mobile networks in remote areas and service fees. Some staff also expressed concerns about mobile money posing a threat to their job security. If mobile money is to realize its full potential as a financial inclusion tool for the poor and unbanked, further research is needed on mobile money adoption and implementation obstacles encountered by non-profits.
Highlights
The term mobile money is generally understood as a service wherein mobile phones are used to access the financial services (GSMA 2010; Etim 2014)
Important to know at the first instance that the current practice of saving money and alongside how they understand about the mobile money, where they heard about it and its usefulness
In order to understand more insights, we further analyzed whether mobile money transaction service is convenient for them, the challenges they faced and how it can be improved
Summary
The term mobile money is generally understood as a service wherein mobile phones are used to access the financial services (GSMA 2010; Etim 2014). World Bank’s Group named the International Finance Corporation (IFC) defines mobile money as money which can be accessed and utilized through mobile phones (Jenkins 2008). Mobile phones are increasingly being used for the empowerment of poor people around the world by creating a link for them to the formal financial system. This digital technology has become successful in making the market more efficient in some underdeveloped regions where there are inadequate infrastructure facilities (e.g., bad roads and slow postal services). It helps to facilitate entrepreneurship by allowing information to move more freely and is providing a new basis for entrepreneurship
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