5/18 (Tues) 9-10amPT: Book Talk – Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution

IMTFI, the Global Africa/Global Blackness Research Cluster in UCI's Department of Anthropology & Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) present the following book talk:

Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution by Sibel Kusimba

May 18th, 2021
Tuesday, 9-10amPT/12-1pmET/6-7pmSAST

Introduced by
Bill Maurer, UC Irvine, IMTFI Director

Panelists
Sibel Kusimba, University of South Florida
Olufunmilayo (Funmi) B. Arewa, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Nina Bandelj, UC Irvine

Webinar registration

https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lvsq2MvXStCuVfONYxlzYQ

JOIN US for a discussion with Sibel Kusimba to talk about her new book, Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, Stanford University Press.

 Available online: Chapter 1 and Table of Contents

About Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution
Technology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people—an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.

About the author
Sibel Kusimba has conducted over twenty years of ethnographic research and archaeological fieldwork in Kenya. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and is the author of African Foragers (2003). You can read her bio here.

For questions email imtfi@uci.edu.

Reimagining the ATM: From Cash-out to Curbside Banking

by Bill Maurer, UC Irvine and Kate Larson, Kate Larson Writes, LLC with Filene's Center of Emerging Technology

With so many options for ATM service delivery, how can credit union leaders make wise decisions to meet their members’ needs? Set against the backdrop of rapidly changing consumer behavior and expectations during COVID-19, this report explores the past, present, and future of the unpretentious automatic teller machine—and how its evolution impacts credit union strategy today.

Image Credit: Filene

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As our financial lives increasingly take up residence online, the ATM may be one of the last physical touchpoints between credit unions and their members. This creates a key opportunity for credit unions to delight members, provide convenience, and create a consistent brand experience across channels. But ATMs can also be an institutional pain point. As physical machines in dispersed locations, they require ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and replacement. Because ATMs touch nearly every part of a credit union’s operations, it can be difficult to view the full impact of an aging fleet, a new strategy, or a potential partnership. Faced with this mix of obstacle and opportunity, how can credit union leaders make the best decisions for their organizations?

WHAT IS THE RESEARCH ABOUT

In the wake of the social and economic changes wrought by COVID-19, ATMs have become an essential way for credit unions to provide members access to cash, deposits, and assistance. Tracing the history of the ATM from early twentieth-century agricultural shows to our pandemic-constrained present reveals a technology that is both deep-rooted and innovative. 

While ATMs may not seem particularly groundbreaking, they have extended the reach of most financial institutions far beyond their branches—and they may provide a blueprint for how credit unions can rethink those branches entirely. We spoke to leaders from credit unions and supporting organizations about their ATM experiences, challenges, successes, and strategies and drew from those insights to offer recommendations and a roadmap for success.

WHAT ARE THE CREDIT UNION IMPLICATIONS?

ATMs are one piece of a member’s full experience with the credit union and should be viewed in that context. Serving as a billboard, a marketing opportunity, and (hopefully) a positive interaction between member and institution, an ATM transaction can leave the member feeling satisfied, or frustrated by a machine that is laggy, limited, or out of service. Credit unions have a variety of options for offering ATM services to members, from owning and servicing their own machines, to partnering with a third- party provider, to joining a shared network, and some organizations may choose several of these. Because any approach will have benefits and drawbacks, each organization must define what success will look like before pursuing a new ATM strategy.

Finally, credit unions should beware of chasing after shiny technology and instead seek to understand their members’ unique needs and preferences in order to design a compatible and accessible ATM experience. But there is plenty of emerging technology to get excited about: contactless payments may render the plastic ATM card extraneous, and open-source software could simplify future upgrades. 

Making decisions about ATMs may never be easy, but given the variety of available choices, credit union leaders can and should find opportunities to generate value for their members.

Link to download report and summary slides.

Link to Infographic: Strategic Contexts for ATMS by Melissa K. Wrapp, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine

HUMA & IMTFI Book Launch (4/19) Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development

Join us! This Monday (4/19) 9amPT/12pmET/6pmSAST
HUMA-IMTFI book talk of the forthcoming Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development by Funmi Arewa, published with Cambridge University Press

Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development

"Elites, Ornamentation, and Future Visions" with Olufunmilayo B. Arewa 

Monday 19 April 9amPT/12pmET/6pmSAST

Register: https://uct-za.zoom.us/j/97775121915

Introductory Remarks

Divine Fuh, HUMA Director

Panelists

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, Temple University Beasley School of Law

Bill Maurer, UC Irvine, IMTFI Director

Rogers Orock, University of Witwatersrand

About the book

In the digital era, many African countries sit at the crossroads of a potential future that will be shaped by digital-era technologies with existing laws and institutions constructed under conditions of colonial and post-colonial authoritarian rule. In Disrupting Africa, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa examines this intersection and shows how it encompasses existing and new zones of contestation based on ethnicity, religion, region, age, and other sources of division. Arewa highlights specific collisions between the old and the new, including in the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, which involved young people engaging with varied digital era technologies who provoked a violent response from rulers threatened by the prospect of political change. Using materials from extensive archival research, Arewa demonstrates how lawmaking and legal processes during and after colonialism continue to frame contexts in which digital technologies are created, implemented, regulated, and used in Africa today.

About the author

Olufunmilayo (“Funmi”) Arewa is the Shusterman Professor of Business and Transactional Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. (Anthropology) from the University of California, Berkeley, an A.M. (Applied Economics) from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an A.B. from Harvard College. Her research focuses on technology, music, film, business, and Africana studies. 

For enquiries and optional readings contact: huma@uct.ac.za or imtfi@uci.edu.

The Politics of Fiscal Sentiments in Pakistan

From the series: Majoritarian Politics in South Asia, Society for Cultural Anthropology

By Noman Baig, Habib University

Photo by Mythri Jegathesan.

In March 2015, Ayyan Ali, a Pakistani supermodel, was arrested at the Islamabad International Airport for attempting to carry half a million dollars in cash onto a flight to Dubai. Ayyan’s arrest quickly became a national sensation once rumors and reports that she was laundering money for prominent politicians and businessmen began to circulate. Public interest and outrage only intensified when the customs officer who had confiscated the money was murdered soon after Ayyan’s arrest. The involvement of a glamorous model, foreign currency, political corruption, Dubai (a dreamland of sorts for the majority of Pakistanis), and now murder ensured that the case dominated the news cycle in Pakistan for months on end.

Ayyan’s glamorous lifestyle—the parties she attended, the men she dated, the clothes she wore, the brands she endorsed—had been the subject of much discussion in Pakistan even before her arrest. The fact that she was caught carrying so much money thus seemed entirely reasonable (if still scandalous) given the elite social circles of which she was part. This was, many ordinary commentators at the time mused, exactly the kind of salacious affair in which the rich would be involved. The misogynistic media coverage of the case, which focused on Ayyan’s body, clothing, tattoos, and makeup, only strengthened ordinary people’s conviction that Pakistani elites were dissolute. Ayyan’s case became emblematic of what many in Pakistan believed was an ayyash—debauched—society. The Urdu term ayyashi describes a transgressive excess, a hedonism that is thought to defile the very soul. For many ordinary people in Pakistan, Ayyan’s ayyash lifestyle and her eventual arrest mirrored the malaise in which the country itself was mired. Ayyan’s arrest had only revealed the already fraying moral-ethical boundaries of the nation.

The scandal raked up by Ayyan’s arrest played an important role in setting the stage for Imran Khan’s victory in the 2018 national election. In speeches leading up to the election, Khan cited Ayyan’s case as an example of the deep political and moral corruption that needed to be rooted out in order to build a “naya” or new Pakistan. He laid particular emphasis on Ayyan’s alleged links with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he variously called “a mafia don” and “the grandfather of corruption.” Indeed, when Ayyan was eventually granted bail, Khan claimed that the judicial decision was the outcome of a “deal” between political rivals Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. Corruption, he seemed to suggest, was the one thing that could smooth over even the most long-standing antagonisms.

It was precisely this shared bond of corruption that Khan vowed to break if elected prime minister. As a start, Khan promised, the PTI (his political party) would bring back the two hundred billion dollars of national wealth that corrupt politicians had supposedly siphoned off and stashed in illegal bank accounts in Switzerland and Panama (see note 1). This promise resonated deeply with many ordinary Pakistanis who viewed corruption as a theft of their dreams and aspirations. What was being stolen by politicians was not just money, but Pakistan’s future, its very possibility of becoming a prosperous nation. By the same token, what Khan promised to restore was not just Pakistan’s fiscal balance, but also its diminished purity and strength.

Read the full blogpost here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-politics-of-fiscal-sentiments-in-pakistan

Notes

1. This massive figure is based on debunked news reports.

Top Five Digital Financial Service Features That Impact Women’s Access and Use

Research in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire provides guidance for DFS providers and regulators

By Helene Smertnik, Senior Researcher at Caribou Digital and Savita Bailur, Research Director at Caribou Digital 

A focus group discussion discussing women’s experiences with DFS
Yopougon, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo credit: Caribou Digital

This blog links to a longer paper we published on SSRN on the impact of DFS features on women in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire based on primary research with “end users”. For more information, please see the paper and please feel free to contact us at helene@cariboudigital.net or savita@cariboudigital.net at any point.

In 2019 (pre-COVID-19), with the support of the Gates Foundation, Caribou Digital and the DFS Lab embarked on a research project to identify which digital financial service (DFS) features impacted women’s access and use the most, compared to men in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire. Mid-way through our research, we shared our initial findings, and with our research now complete, we’re able to take a closer look at these features. There were five that stood out the most:

1. Ubiquitous agent networks.
2. Real-time SMS notifications and seamless interoperability.
3. Transparent fees.
4. Help users avoid the need to revoke payments.
5. Less stringent ID requirements as part of a tiered KYC approach.

Ubiquitous DFS networks 

Uniting tech and touch is critical for women. Women were quite vocal about the importance of a ubiquitous agent network (with no gender preference for agents) in order for them to have trust and confidence in DFS. In fact, a few women mentioned that they were dissuaded completely from using a financial service if it did not have any shops or agents, as was the case with the loan app Tala, which only provided a customer service number to call.

Older and less digitally savvy women relied the most on agents, indicating a generational divide which is sometimes even greater than the gender divide. Though older women said they sometimes ask their children for help, they were also cautious about disclosing how much money they had to their family. As a result, they would often go to agents for help.

Recommendation: DFS providers’ investment in physical agent networks is therefore critical to ensure the uptake of their services by women.

Real-time SMS notifications and seamless interoperability 

As part of our research, we observed men and women conducting mobile money transactions at shops. A key difference in their behaviors was that women tended to wait in the shop until they received the SMS notifications confirming their transactions, while men would simply drop off the money and continue on their way, expecting the SMS to come later. Because women require the official confirmation before moving on, real-time SMS notifications are key for their continued use of mobile money. If they have to wait too long, they will eventually go back to using cash to avoid wasting time. 

The issue of timely SMS notifications comes up especially when using interoperable services, highlighting the need for more seamless interoperability. For example, Equity Bank and M-Pesa are interoperable, meaning they connect to each other and transfers can be made between their accounts. However, the transfers sometimes take time to process, and the confirmation messages do not arrive or are late, leading women to go back to manual cash transfers. 

Recommendation: Ensuring SMS notifications are received in near real time is critical for DFS providers to best serve women.

Transparency in fees and cost structures 

“The units disappear without anyone knowing why. This colleague is telling us it is because of subscriptions done without our agreement but until now I had no clue,” said one of our interviewees, Elodie. Such hidden and nontransparent fees discourage women from using DFS, as we found that women were more sensitive to fees than men and also less likely to find workarounds to avoid them. For example, in both Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire, younger men knew that they could reduce transaction fees by conducting smaller transactions multiple times rather than one higher cost transaction, while most women were not aware of this strategy. 

Because of these fees, there was a strong sense among low-income women that money didn’t “grow” when left on their phone. Consequently, they did not associate mobile money with the possibility of savings, preferring savings groups or keeping money in cash at home, despite potential security issues. 

Recommendation: To ensure women use DFS, it is key for providers to have ethical cost structure designs as well as transparent communications about possible fees.

Help users avoid the need to revoke transactions 

Most digital financial service providers offer an option for revoking a payment after it has gone through. However, this process is complex, and the use of this option has the potential to hinder women’s usage of DFS more than men’s. In neither Côte d’Ivoire nor Kenya were there clear instructions from the DFS providers for how to go about revoking a payment, and if the money had already been withdrawn it became impossible. 

In a focus group discussion with women merchants in the outskirts of Nairobi, we also heard about how revoking features could lead to fraud, as some of the women had been cheated by customers who paid but then reversed their payments. The women were considering reverting back to cash due to these experiences. 

Recommendation: Given the complexity and cost of revoking payments and the lack of standards in place, it is important for providers to help users avoid the need to revoke payments by guaranteeing clear and sufficient cancelling features in place before the user hits send. For example, confirmation messages should appear which explicitly state the phone number and amount being sent, and should give enough time to review all the information without the phone shutting down. 

ID requirements and the need for a tiered KYC approach

In theory, women said they appreciated the importance of requiring an ID for security measures, both for agents and customers. However, in practice they privileged going to agents who didn’t ask for their ID. Since many women do not have an ID, they often rely on their husbands’ ID, or simply do not use digital financial services if an ID is required. 

In response to this reality, in Côte d’Ivoire, some agents intentionally do not ask for ID in order to gain a competitive advantage over agents that required it. In Kenya, agents would not always ask for ID when they already knew the customer. We also saw scenarios where agents would only require ID for transactions over a certain amount. 

Recommendation: While these agents are improvising to respond to the needs of their customers, ID requirements should be adjusted and standardized to meet women’s needs. A tiered KYC (know your customer) approach would encourage women’s usage by allowing them to make small mobile money transactions without providing identification. 

*****

The women’s experiences shared above highlight how important it is for DFS providers and policy makers to consider women’s needs and wants in order to make sure they are financially included. The risk of women’s financial exclusion is even greater in the context of COVID-19, as payments are increasingly digital and access to DFS is crucial. These five features can help ensure that digital tools make women more - not less - financially included. 

*****

Watch our webinar, What Digital Financial Services features might matter more to women than men and why?

This research was conducted with AFROES in Kenya, led by Gathoni Mwai and Sylvia Oloo and Empow’Her, led by Chloe Roncajolo and Serge Kouadio in Côte d’Ivoire. A special thanks to them.

New Book: Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution by Sibel Kusimba

Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, Stanford University Press by Sibel Kusimba

JANUARY 2021

240 PAGES

FROM $28.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9781503613515

Paperback ISBN: 9781503614413

Ebook ISBN: 9781503614420

Abstract

Technology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people—an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.

About the author

Sibel Kusimba has conducted over twenty years of ethnographic research and archaeological fieldwork in Kenya. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and is the author of African Foragers (2003).

Excerpts and more

• Sample Chapter 1: "A Central Banker Talks Money"
• Book Contents
• Purchase book at Stanford University Press - USE CODE Winter21 for 40% off until Jan 25, 2021
• View Kusimba's recent publications and projects here.

Mobile Money and the (Un)Making of Social Relations in Chivi, Zimbabwe

Article in the Journal of Southern African Studies by Simbarashe Gukurume, Great Zimbabwe University & Innocent T. Mahiya, University of KwaZulu Natal 

Mobile money agents booths at Chivi Growth Point;
Photo Credit: Simbarashe Gukurume 

Abstract

The rapid expansion of mobile money technologies in Zimbabwe has substantially altered the monetary ecology and the payment landscape. This article examines the ways in which the adoption, usage and meanings attached to mobile money (re)configure social relationships in the rural community of Chivi. We demonstrate the ways in which mobile money technologies mediate the politics of everyday social relations and shape local social relations in profound ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the complex ways through which mobile money makes and unmakes social relations between transacting parties and between the agents themselves. Our main finding is that the impact of mobile money on social relations in the community is predominantly ambivalent. We observed that mobile money triggers contestation, hostility and conflict while simultaneously fostering social solidarity and convivial relationships. The main sources of contention in mobile money transactions in Chivi involved space, currency conversion exchange rates, identification and charges. These are, however, unintended consequences of mobile money usage in Chivi.

Access Journal of South African Studies: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2020.1823682

To obtain digital copies of the full paper, email Simbarashe Gukurume, sgukurume1@gmail.com.

Read about the original IMTFI-funded research: http://www.imtfi.uci.edu/research/2015/mahiya_gukurume_2015.php#