Would you pay more for soap when purchasing with mobile money?

Jean Lee, Jonathan Morduch, Abu Shonchoy

Imagine that someone approached you and asked how much you would be willing to pay for a bar of soap or a bag of potato chips? It seems like a simple question.

You would probably, though, ask which bar of soap and which potato chips? Think a bit longer, and you might be asking “pay for them how?”

Researchers have found that the last question – about the form of payment -- matters. For example, paying by credit card rather than cash changes how consumers spend: Studies suggest that using plastic induces consumers to pay higher tips at restaurants, buy more junk food, and pay more for a chance to see a pro basketball game. These results are not always robust, and studies struggle to separate the liquidity effect of credit cards from the psychological effect of using plastic vs. cold, hard cash. Still, the weight of the evidence suggests that people spend more when using credit cards (or even when thinking about credit cards) for reasons that are at least partly psychological.

The digital financial revolution prompts us to update the question: As mobile money widens in use, will it also influence spending choices in the way that plastic has? Or is digital in fact different?

In 2014, we started a project on the impacts of mobile money in Bangladesh. The study focuses on users of mobile money in northern villages and Dhaka neighborhoods. Mobile money has spread extremely fast in Bangladesh, largely due to the growth of bKash and its competitors. The mobile money sector is one of Bangladesh’s great recent economic success stories, and bKash alone now provides mobile money services to over 20 million customers.

Midway through the study, with financial support from IMTFI, we asked two randomly-chosen groups of people questions about their willingness to pay for household basics and some small luxuries. We asked the study participants how much they would be willing to pay for a quantity of fine rice, a good bar of soap, particular pieces of clothing (a salwar kameez and a lungi), a bag of potato chips, and a packet of biscuits (cookies). We asked the participants to respond (hypothetically) in contexts when using cash or mobile money.

Given the set-up and the fact that the questions were hypothetical, we did not expect to see much difference. But, as the table shows (which is from our urban sample), in 5 of the 6 cases respondents indicated that they would be willing to pay a higher price when using mobile money to facilitate the transaction.

Summary Statistics for Willingness to Pay (WTP) in Taka

Variable	Cash Mean	Mobile Money Mean	Cash Median	Mobile Money Median
WTP for rice	392	403	400	400
WTP for Beauty Soap	89	75	30	30
WTP for Salwar Kameez	701	750	700	700
WTP for Lungi	330	346	300	350
WTP for Potato Chips	39	41	30	30
WTP for Biscuits	74	79	50	60

To dig deeper, we ran a set of regressions to control for the respondent’s age, education, income, work status and other key variables. The regressions again show that in 5 of the 6 cases respondents indicated that they would be willing to pay a higher price when using mobile money to facilitate the transaction. (The negative signs mean that they would not be willing to pay as much when using cash.) The standard errors are fairly wide, however, and only in three of the cases are the differences statistically significant with 95 percent confidence.

Regression Results for Willingness to Pay, With Controls

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
	Rice	Beauty Soap	Salwar Kameez	Lungi	Potato Chips	Biscuits
Cash	-11.1**	9.9	-49.0**	-14.9**	-1.8	-3.6
Treatment	(5.4)	(8.0)	(24.4)	(6.8)	(2.8)	(4.0)
Observations	812	813	812	812	811	811

Standard errors in parentheses^* p < 0.10, ^** p < 0.05, ^*** p < 0.01

Since the same participants answered questions about each of the 6 items, there is little concern that a given respondent was considering different qualities of items in the two scenarios. Like much of the earlier literature, however, we cannot distinguish the liquidity effect from psychological effects.

Half a year before, we had introduced mobile money to the first group. Our research team had trained members how to use mobile money, and many had started using it. The second group was an experimental control, and we provided them with no training nor discussion of mobile money. Our initial results suggest that the training and exposure to bKash (and the greater likelihood of its subsequent use) strongly narrowed the difference in willingness to pay between cash and mobile money. The main differences in spending patterns with cash versus mobile money thus come from the control group, and it is possible that their preferences will narrow too with greater exposure to mobile money.

We are now analyzing the rural sample, and the initial results are opposite to the urban sample: In the village, there is greater willingness to pay in cash. Our next step is to investigate why, including whether the result reflects a lack of stores that accept digital payment in the villages (rather than a hypothetical willingness to pay), or whether the result stems from unfamiliarity with mobile banking.

Economists generally assume that money is fungible, a dollar is a dollar, a taka is a taka. However, in both our urban and rural samples, the form of payment clearly makes a difference. There does seem to be something different about holding 20-taka on your mobile phone rather than holding a 20-taka banknote in your hand. In Dhaka, being able to pay by phone appears to raise the price that customers are willing to pay for household goods. If these results stand, retailers may now have another reason to encourage their customers to use mobile money.

Read their Final Report

Jean Lee is an economist at the Millennium Challenge Corporation and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at NYU. Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Robert Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU. Abu Shonchoy is Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) in Chiba, Japan and a Visiting Scholar at NYU (2016-18).

IMTFI SPRING 2017 NEWSLETTER

IMTFI'S Spring 2017 Newsletter has just been published!

Here's a look at the Institute’s recent announcements, academic publications, media hits, and public engagements.  

Read on for details on upcoming events:

• 4/08 - Financial Inclusion of the Poor Workshop at Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan
• 4/19 - Mobile Money, Development, & Financial Inclusion in Africa Symposium at Cornell University
• 5/04 - Financial Inclusion and Sustainability: How Profitable is the Business, How Viable the Indebtedness? at Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia 
• 5/15 - Dilemmas Concerning Financial Inclusion at CIESAS, Guadalajara, Mexico 

My Smart Phone is a Love Trophy: On Boyfriend-Girlfriend Negotiations and the Tensions between Adults and Adolescent Girls in Digital Nigeria

By Jude Kenechi Onyima and Chinedu Francis Egbunike

Boyfriend wooing an adolescent girl with smart phone
at a bush path in Anambra Stateption

"….If you do not like him, why did you accept his friendship?’’ Chika’s friend asked her as they walked from school homeward. ‘‘I accepted because he bought me a Samsung smart phone," Chika replied.

Exchanges like the one above appeared in many of the stories we collected during our 12-month ethnographic research in Nigeria about the tensions between adults and adolescent girls regarding ownership and use of mobile phones. A majority of adults in our study agreed that feature phones (cheap phones meant for calls and text messaging) are appropriate for early adolescents, and that smart phones were acceptable for late adolescents, but with conditions. In contrast, a majority of girls felt that restricted access to mobile phones is an infringement on their autonomy and their quest to join the global community. Especially in Christian neighborhoods, adolescent girls have found allies in their boyfriends who provided girls with smart phones. This has connected adolescent girls, their boyfriends, and girls’ parents in an unexpected web of duplicity, interdependence and contradictions.

The intrigues that surround phone ownership and use by adolescent girls show how the mobile phone mediates how young people construct their identity, struggle for autonomy and their self-expression. It exemplifies how technology can create a new social culture. Smart phones, unlike feature phones, display symbolism which transcends economic or technological meaning. Apart from attracting prestige and the feeling of 'I have arrived,' they reveal emotional flows and connectedness.

As we observed in our study, boyfriends’ purchase of smart phones for their girlfriends consolidated boyfriend-girlfriend relationships in a unique way. As seen in Chika’s story above, a girls’ acceptance of a phone means acceptance of a relationship. By purchasing a smart phone, a boy extends his influence and control over a girl. In another example, Edna, a 16-year-old student, returned a Techno mobile phone to her boyfriend after six weeks when she heard that he purchased another phone for another girl. Similarly, Arinze insisted that Sandra must return the phone he bought for her when they broke off their friendship. Phone ownership among adolescent girls and their boyfriends therefore represents a new form of creating visibility, attachment and identity.

When Amaka, a 17-year-old caregiver, lost her phone, her worry was not about the phone but the strain that the loss would put on her relationship with her boyfriend Chidi, who could not afford to buy a new phone for her. For Amaka, accepting another guy’s gift of a phone entails shifting her allegiance away from Chidi. For boyfriends, providing a smart phone to a girl is a symbol of conquest over other potential intruders. A smart phone is a love trophy. Whose phone a girl accepts and also uses draws the boundary between those whose intimacy is desirable and those whose is not. The smart phone in the context of a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is more than a technological innovation. Mobile phones acquire new meanings as they become embedded in relations of accountability, reciprocity and secrecy.

Adolescent girls comparing phones at high school
graduation party in Enugu State, Nigeria

A smart phone in the hand of an adolescent girl signifies the autonomy, empowerment and strength of her opposite sex friendship. In our study, over 87 percent of adolescent girls were using smart phones they did not purchase but were given to them. Most girls do not enjoy using feature phones and usually turn down men who could not acquire smart phones for them. Mobile phones could be given as birthday gifts, graduation gifts, lovers’ day gifts, appreciation gifts and gifts brought back from long distance trips. In contrast, feature phones and old phones do not evoke the same symbolism with regard to the quality of opposite sex friendship. Ninety-nine percent of phones bought from abroad were smart phones and they are highly symbolic. They show where a girls’ attachment lies and where her affection flows ‘’…I cannot put my phone in a bag except where I am not proud of it.” Mercy, a 16-year-old apprentice replied during one of our interviews:

 “…As you know, we girls compare a lot when we meet one other. In the past, we discretely compared shoes, jewelry, hairstyles and handbags. Today, it is our mobile phone. I flaunt it [the phone] to intimidate other girls and make my boyfriend proud….”.

Surprisingly, girls are not much interested in how the money is raised for acquiring the phone, or what lengths boyfriends go to in order to give phones to their girlfriends. Obinna, a 17-year-old student could not sit for his Senior School Certificate Examination because he used the money for his examination fee to buy a smart phone for his girlfriend who, incidentally, was his classmate. “…I did not want to lose her love to other men….” Obinna pleaded, in response to his parents and school authority’s queries about what happened to the money. Boyfriends do not take lightly the privileges conferred on them by purchasing smart phones for their girlfriends. They always check up on how the girls are using their phones. Adaobi, a 17-year-old hawker, fought with her boyfriend over access to the phone, refusing to tell him the new password and denying him access to it. Just like the phone that was smashed during their fight, so, too, was their friendship broken: “…Someone who did not bring money to repair the phone he bought earlier does not have the right to question what I do with the phone. He lost his privileges when another man gave me money to repair it, ”Adaobi retorted, as she justified her behavior.

Smart phones purchased by boyfriends have therefore become instruments of accountability and availability, as Erin Kenny observed in her research with Tanzanian University students (2016). Boyfriends expect explanations of what their girls do with their mobile phone. “….Nothing worries my boyfriend like seeing ‘user busy’ when he calls me. He expects me to put all other calls on hold and answer him first. He also monitors how long I spend on calls and with whom…” a 17-year-old female university student in our study narrated during an interview. Buying smart phones for adolescent girls gives boyfriends a special place in the lives of their girls. It shifts accountability for a girl’s phone life away from her parents and on to her boyfriend. When Aisha Mammud, our female researcher asked 17-year-old Fatima how frequently her parent accesses her phone, her response was immediate: “…I will not let them touch my phone at all.” However Fatima allowed her boyfriend access to her password and he goes through her contacts and phone logs for monitoring purposes.

A veteran pharmacist in one of the communities we studied insisted that her daughter must finish high school before she could use a smart phone. She was shocked to discover that her daughter was already using a smart phone for over six months - bought for her by her boyfriend. Just like other girls in our study, the daughter left her phone with her friend and sometimes hid it in the house. I had a similar experience of shock the day that I gave one thousand Naira (about $3) in airtime to three students in a Christian neighborhood, thinking that it was only one of them who owned a mobile phone. One of the students privately unzipped a section of her clothing to reveal a phone hidden in her underwear, while another ran towards her friend’s bag to pick up her phone that she had been hiding there.

Eighty-five percent of adults we interviewed did not want adolescent girls to use smart phones without first meeting parents’ requirements that girls first graduate from high school or reach age 18. Adults believed that smart phone use could work against girls’ concentration and learning as well as give access to unsafe knowledge. "Phones connected online are dangerous in the hands of adolescent girls...," a 54-year-old mother of three burst out at one school debate. Most adults, especially in Christian neighborhoods, believed that smart phones could drive girls into uncharted life adventures, what Mizuko Ito and her research team refer to as, "geeking out" (page 28), and thereby diminishing adults’ control. As one community leader with three grandchildren explained to us:

“…Any mobile phone not purchased by a known relative should be confiscated or returned. Early ownership of smart phones offers unchecked autonomy to adolescent girls; this is malignant due to their age. It makes them gullible to treacherous habits. A number of high school girls have died seeking after the promises of people they met through the phone…”

Sadiq, who purchased a feature phone for her daughter in order to prevent her from accepting a smart phone from a boyfriend, discovered that her daughter willfully damaged the feature phone in order to make room for a smart phone. The daughter changed the casing on the new smart phone her boyfriend bought for her to an old one and lied that it was a spoilt old phone she got from the outgoing school principal. In another case, a 52-year-old female teacher who insisted that her daughter should return the smart phone bought by her daughter’s boyfriend discovered nine months later that said phone had been hidden by her daughter and not returned after all.

An adult querying an adolescent girl over the source 
of the smart phone she was caught using.

Our in-depth interviews with adolescent girls and adults provided justification for why most parents frown on boyfriends’ smart phone gifts. There are incessant phone-related misunderstandings, violence, and battering. Men tend to take their privileges to the extreme. Girls who out of naivety accepted the offer from a boyfriend did not find it easy to exit the relationship when they became uncomfortable. A 19-year-old school dropout told us that she was raped by the man who bought her smart phone: “…Men do not believe in a free lunch; any kindness they show is an investment of which no pleading can deter them from raping.” She continued, “Many of us who accepted guys because of phone reasons regret the act and wished we were smarter." Some men insist that their smart phone should be returned to them whenever the relationship collapses and such tensions have generated issues involving police and community leaders. “…He has slapped me for allowing another man to use the phone he bought for me. He had seized the smart phone from me many times and had uninstalled whatsapp services in it to avoid my interaction with other men,” Amaka, an 18-year-old fashion apprentice revealed to us. When we inquired why some girls accept smart phones from men knowing these potential consequences, Muna, a 17-year-old university student, shared her views:“…They accept because it is a ‘smart phone’. It gives them identity, smart phones is freedom and reputation. It shows that you have arrived. A smart phone is a girl's best friend - it cures loneliness.”

Finally, our study revealed that phone-related quarrels occur every 72 hours in homes where there are adolescent girls. Adults have reservations about adolescent girls’ use of smart phones. Many felt uncomfortable, threatened, even perplexed, while others are resigned to the fact of girls using smart phones. Adults shy away from the task of preparing adolescent girls for the responsibilities entailed in the digital revolution. Meanwhile, girls have not relented in a bid to outmaneuver adults and their roadblocks. Highly religious people feel more threatened by adolescent girls’ use of smart phones and as a result, create more roadblocks to uptake. However, Christian adolescent girls have more opportunities to acquire smart phones from boyfriends than do their Muslim counterparts. Yet tensions appear to be greater in Christian homes. Tensions are also higher among urban than among rural poor.

The digital revolution has indeed altered adults and adolescent girls’ social identities and created a new social space mediated by smart phones. This change is common in Christian-dominant Southern Nigeria. Our study shows that under these circumstances, adults who can play a “midwifery role” in ushering girls into the digital age could achieve better results in ‘redeeming adolescent girls’ from irresponsible use than those who play resistant roles in restricting girls’ smart phone use. The peculiar role of smart phones in boyfriend-girlfriend relations is still evolving. What has become clear for many of our study participants, is that a new culture of juggling identities in this social space is here to stay. But for those participants who are not comfortable with the identity the digital revolution has assigned them, there is still much room for negotiation.

Read Jude Kenechi Onyima and Chinedu Francis Egbunike's final report here
        
References
Kenny. E (2016) “Phones means lies”: Secrets, Sexuality and the Subjectivity of Mobile Phone in Tanzania.  Economic Anthropology 3: 254-265. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sea2.12062/abstract

Ito. M, Horst. H, Butanti. M, Boyd.D, Herr-Stephenson. B, Lange.P, Pascoe. C and Robinson. L (2008) Living and Learning with new Media: Summary of Findings from Digital Youth Projects. The John. D and Catherine. T MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. (November) http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-WhitePaper.pdf

The Last Mile or The Informal Ecosystem for Balancing Monies

By Solène Morvant-Roux and Simon Barussaud, University of Geneva, Stéphane Reuse, PEASA, Camille Compaoré and Ilboudo Dieudonné, CIRES,Burkina Faso

This blog builds on a research project that looked at patterns of mobile money (MM) usage for sending money “home” by Burkinabé migrants living in rural settings in Ivory Coast. The study looked at supply characteristics and households' practices in both Ivory Coast and in Burkina Faso and closely focused on conditions around sending and receiving mobile money. We found that the spatial spread of mobile money retailers in remote areas of both countries helps to overcome the migrant senders’ and remittance receivers’ lack of knowledge of the mobile phone technology. While mobile phone companies show a (very) strong interest in the development of a formal “ecosystem” to enable the usage of mobile money to perform payments and act as a payment device instead of being only a value transfer device, our study highlights an informal ecosystem to overcome the challenge of balancing monies in rural settings. In both the areas social intermediation remains key in helping users overcome the challenges associated with knowledge of withdrawal from the mobile money account.

Local retailers play a key role in sending and receiving mobile money remittances

When looking at the supply side, we highlight an impressive increase in the number of MM suppliers between 2012 and 2014. This improvement in MM coverage includes the most remote localities in both countries. MM suppliers, now cover not only the sub-regional economic centers but also remote localities and even the migrant camps found in Ivory Coast. The spatial diffusion provides the infrastructure to convert cash to MM and perform mobile money transfers. In Ivory Coast, 50% of mobile money transfers are performed by relegating this task to the local MM agents/retailers. Thus, while mobile banking is supposed to enhance peer to peer banking relationships using the new technology, local MM retailers still play a key role in performing MM transactions. In Ivory Coast where the migrants live, the presence of local retailers allows the head of the family to use this new technology without having to relegate it to the younger more educated family members. This aspect allows them to maintain control over their financial decisions. In Burkina Faso, the crucial decision of the receivers of the remittances relates to from whom and were they are going to cash out remittances.

Accessing cash and balancing monies, a key issue for MM providers

However, "sending money home" via mobile phones from Ivory Coast to Burkina Faso strongly implies cashing in and cashing out CFA Francs. Deriving most part of their income from farming activities, migrants use the cash they get from the harvest to send money home. Meanwhile, remittances received in Burkina Faso rural settings are always converted to cash. In this context, most mobile money agents in Burkina Faso often end up short in CFA Francs while in the Ivory Coast the problem is where to deposit cash. Thus, for the local MM retailer in Ivory Coast, the problem of carrying cash is considerable while for that in Burkina Faso, the issue is finding a regular access to cash. Far from a peer to peer transaction, the last mile (from the retailer to the bank and from the retailer to the end-user) is therefore of main concern here. Thus, cash is a main constraint that local MM retailers face in establishing reliability with their clients.

Picture 1. Selling goods or cashing remittances out?

In deciding how to send money “home” (either informally or through mobile or international services), Burkinabé migrants living in Ivory Coast do take into consideration the capacity of their local agent in Burkina to cash out the mobile money remittances. This is critical for larger sums of money (above 1 million CFA Francs). Therefore, the issue of the last mile deals mostly with the ability to balance CFA Francs with mobile money. In short, in Burkina Faso, local mobile money providers have to find a way of balancing the two monies to be able to provide remittance services to the local population.

Our findings in the regions where we conducted the research highlights that mobile money agents often combine mobile banking services with commercial activities involving buying, selling, and trading goods. The location of MM providers according to different selling point characteristics is illustrated by the figure below, built from our own census in Burkina Faso where the study was conducted.

Picture 2. Types of mobile money providers along different settings in Burkina Faso      

Solving liquidity constraints while avoiding security issues: creating a non-official and local MM payment system

It is striking that in Ivory Coast only 12% of the MM providers are shopkeepers while this is the case for 50% of local MM providers in Burkina Faso. The difference can be explained by the fact that in Burkina Faso, the selling goods activity is key in the delivery of international remittances since access to cash is ensured by buying and selling items which then allow cashing out of MM remittances. 

In remote villages, MM services are exclusively provided by shopkeepers. MM transfers are also provided by local shopkeepers who do not own a MM seller sim card and instead make use of their own sim-card to perform remittances withdrawals.

Accessing cash in remote areas also implies managing security. The problem is the following: a selling point in a remote setting faces difficulties supplying the necessary cash for large withdrawals because of a lack of access to large amounts of cash. To overcome this constraint, one strategy we found in this region is that the shopkeeper uses mobile money to buy goods in semi-urban settings, from a MM dealer who is also a shopkeeper. This enables him to reduce his mobile money by getting goods. He then sells these items, converting them into cash, which is available for future mobile remittances. In this context, the linkage with cash remains an important challenge to strengthen MM services in rural areas. Buying goods with mobile money enable the MM selling point to balance the cash-in and cash-out transactions. 

The key role played by social intermediaries in channeling remittances

This may also explain why mobile money remittances target semi-urban areas instead of directly reaching rural ones as well as the frequent use of intermediaries. Actually 50% of the transfers first go through intermediaries before reaching the end-beneficiary. Beyond local MM agents, intermediaries involve people from the extended family who are able to master the new technology and access cash (again) such as young students (female and male) in Ouagadougou. Usually these students come from Ivory Coast to study in Burkina Faso where they play a central role in strengthening the ties between family members in Burkina Faso and the migrants in Ivory Coast. Cashing out remittances and delivering them is a key task they perform. In addition, the other similar central figures (masculine) are the uncle or the brother. These intermediaries are also instrumental when the recipient lacks a MM account, which according to our interviews is unrelated to mastering the technology since “the local agent can help!” Most transfers are performed at the MM selling point. This is illustrated by a young female student who formerly was in charge of carrying the money sent by her father to her grandma, but she says that now she has her own account. Finally the cashing out constraint is illustrated by the percentage of remittances sent by mobile phone that reach semi-urban regions compared to the number of traditional sending services that do.

Conclusion

Mobile phone companies show a (very) strong interest in the development of a payment platform to enable the usage of mobile money to perform payments and act as a payment device instead of being only a value transfer device (not only able to perform transfers but also to perform payments). In Burkina Faso, mobile money is not yet a means of payment because of the limited scope of the payment platform. However, some local usages by the shopkeepers allow its usage as a means of payment.

Our findings show that the situation in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso is still mainly driven by cashing in and out CFA Francs instead of making direct use of MM. In that context our study shows that the diffusion of mobile money services (mainly used to perform national and international transfers) in rural settings is closely shaped by the provider's ability to access cash. Shopkeepers are therefore key in this process. This capacity of converting mobile money into CFA Francs might also limit the expansion of mobile money usage in rural settings. Finally, in contrast to what is being argued in the literature, use and ownership of mobile phones do not play a central role in mobile banking usage and uptake to perform remittances within the context we focussed on. The lack of knowledge and lack of mastery is partially compensated by relegating the task to local retailers and/or social intermediaries.

Our aknowledgements to IMTFI team for constant support and relevant feedbacks to earlier version, Marc Roesh for the comic and Joshua C. Greene, for the editing.

The final report for the project can be found here.

The Mobile Money Revolution That Has Not Come: Report on Displaced Peasant Families in Rural Colombia

IMTFI Researchers Maria Elisa Balen, Sonia Laguna and Rosa Guerrero

We are pleased to share the final report of IMTFI funded research "The Mobile Money Revolution That Has Not Come." The research explores the role of mobile money technology in social protection networks among displaced peasant families in Colombia. 

Drawing family maps. Research participants in Putumayo, Colombia,

Report Abstract 

Several countries in the world have sought to pursue the agenda of financial inclusion in combination with government cash transfer programs. This joint effort is geared towards ensuring a certain virtuous cycle where the government to people transfers are partially envisioned as instruments for fostering financial inclusion, the expansion of which in turn would further facilitate the distribution of government cash transfers. This is also the case in Colombia where government agencies, despite their adherence to ‘market dynamics’, have engaged in a series of regulatory changes aimed at facilitating financial inclusion. The development of mobile banking in parallel to government cash transfer has been a part of this agenda.

The uptake of mobile banking, in these target populations has, however, failed to meet the expectations. This report is based on research carried out in two rural areas of Colombia (Montes de María in the north of Colombia and Putumayo in the south). In it, we explore the vicissitudes of mobile banking development by looking at both the materialization of government policy in these two territories and actual practices among the local population who use alternative ways of sending money to their relatives. Our findings relate to the territorial deployment of mobile banking and the movement of money in networks of social protection among forcibly displaced families. In terms of government policy, we found that shortcomings in the physical and organizational infrastructure required for government cash transfers impair the uptake of mobile banking. Related to this, frequent procedural changes make it difficult for people to develop sufficient knowledge and trust in mobile banking technologies. The long-term internally displaced peasant families have been resettled in different territories and face the twin challenges of increased money needs as well as overcoming distance in their practices of social protection. In contrast to the cross-national remittances through which economic migrants participate in the social life of their families and communities, these families practice what we have termed ‘accompanied money’ which means transportation of money by family members themselves. We found that by accompanying the relatively small, yet much needed sums of money, they are able to magnify their support by bringing in goods such as food parcels, and also with their care and company.  

The final report can be accessed here.

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