Social Practices in mBanking

Jun 03, 2009

Attending the Bottom of the Pyramid Conference at the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. Highlight? The social practices around M-PESA by Olga Morawczynski of the University of Edinburgh.

An average of 5 transfers per month; mostly men working in urban settings sending money to their wife and other family members; sending on average ~12% of income back home - rising to up to ~30% of income; with remittances rising at certain times - for investing in grain, at the beginning of the school year. For the women the remittances were <70% of total household income - often they were forbidden by their husbands to work - their husbands didn't want them out of the home. Whilst the men often presented their wives with a mobile phone to receive the remittance - that same phone could be used to receive remittances from other people - undermining the authority of the husband. How did usage changed over time? Since it was affordable for men to send small amounts of money the women could 'hassle' the men to send money more frequently. For men sending small, frequent remittances was a sign that they were thinking about their wife, whilst sending too much at any one time might give her too much freedom.

Since the remittances need to be picked up from the kiosk operator - it was obvious to neighbours when the wife was picking up new money - and the husband sometimes asked friends and neighbours to keep an eye on what she was doing - lest she do something inappropriate. This created practices such as debt collectors waiting in the home for the text message notifying the wife that a new transaction has arrived and walking to the kiosk together; to peers hanging around the kiosk operator waiting for remittances to come in so they can borrow a cut. Put this in a context where it is difficult if not socially impossible to say no to relatives who need a cut.

It wasn't clear whether the husbands in the city had mistresses, and whether any of those relationship transactions were transferred through M-PESA - questions of what transactions flow through traceable mediums and what stays off the grid. Consider the privacy of your own transactions - who would you give permission to see a summary of what you've spent your money on? For many the mobile phone now lives in that space.

Good stuff.

A related presentation from Olga here and a diary of an M-PESA user based on the same research here.