April 2019 – Page 2 – Mobile Money

The bigger picture

Posted on April 7, 2019May 2, 2019 by booklet_admin

It is widely accepted that financial inclusion is key to reducing poverty and achieving inclusive economic growth. Yet, the Global Findex shows that as of 2017, about 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked – without an account at a financial institution or through mobile money. Globally, half of the unbanked adults come from the poorest 40 percent households of their economy. Of the unbanked, 56% are women.1 In developing nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jordan and Nigeria, cultural norms play a role, limiting women’s access to accounts and agents.

Studies find that women’s usage of mobile money is linked with improvement of their household’s earning potential and future wellbeing. Research shows that in both Indonesia and Tanzania, women micro-entrepreneurs encouraged to open mobile savings accounts reported having greater household decision-making power than those who did not have mobile savings.

A study in Kenya demonstrated how mobile money enabled women-headed households to increase their savings by more than a fifth, allowing 185,000 women to start up small businesses.

Meanwhile, women-headed households in Nepal spent 15 percent more on nutritious food and 20 percent more on education after getting digital savings accounts.

Having recognised the significance of women’s financial inclusion, initiative is being taken across the world towards closing the gender gap. In Pakistan, Karandaaz recently collaborated with GRID Impact to design a smartphone application for mobile money specifically for women. With the understanding that cultural norms in Pakistan limit women’s travel, the interface included audio instructions which allows them to use the app from home. In Andhra Pradesh, women were found to be more comfortable transacting with female bank agents, providing an incentive for financial institutions to actively recruit female business correspondents to expand their client base.

Access to financial services can transform lives and livelihoods of the unbanked, especially poor women of poor countries. But identifying the right approach to digital financial inclusion for women is a challenge.

Setting the Context (below)

Posted on April 7, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

31%-50% — Growth of account holders from 2014-2017

35 million — bKash users in Bangladesh

29 percentage points — gender gap in financial access

Setting the Context

Posted on April 7, 2019May 2, 2019 by booklet_admin

As recently as two decades ago, Bangladesh’s rural north was riddled with poverty and experienced monga (famine-like situation). The south was ravaged by cyclones. In the north east, transportation by boat was the only option for almost three quarters of a year. The West was far from what we mean by the global ‘West’. However, progress spread quickly across the country in the form of concrete roads, resilient crops and affordable medicines. Bangladesh is now poised to become the 26th largest economy in the world by 2030, lifting millions out of poverty in the process.…

The economy has changed, and with it life. In an age when tens of millions own cell phones, mobile money has spread like wildfire. The percentage of Bangladeshi adults with financial accounts rose from 31% to 50% between 2014 and 2017 — a gain almost entirely due to a 20% increase in bKash mobile money accounts. bKash was the first mobile money service and continues to control a vast majority of the market. There are currently 35 million bKash users in Bangladesh with monthly transactions as high as USD 2.86 billion (February 2019).

The unprecedented triumph of mobile money notwithstanding, there was a snag — women were being left behind. Other than in the bustling cities, women were hardly integrated into this thundering juggernaut present in digital finance. The Global Findex shows a gender gap of 29 percentage points in financial access, which is significantly higher than the global average of 9 percentage points. This contrast in access to financial services poses a stumbling block to integrated development. And Bangladesh is not alone in its struggle to close the gender gap.

Afloat with a mobile wallet

Posted on April 7, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

A three-hour boat ride away from Itna is Khaliajuri sub-district. There, the villages are small stranded islands and only raised houses manage to stay above the onrush of monsoon waters. Himadri Sarkar is a resident of one of these islands. She was introduced to bKash around two years ago. Other than using the most basic services, Himadri has turned her bKash wallet into a savings account. “When we dealt with hard cash, there were no savings. I could not keep tabs on our expenses and money just seemed to slip away. Now I can save,” she says about her deposit scheme with BRAC Microfinance.

During monsoon, her husband goes fishing to distant areas and sends her the daily income through bKash. She also receives BDT 10,000 in remittance from her brother in Oman. Himadri had never received any money as remittance before bKash since the closest bank is almost four hours away. With fast and easy financial services through bKash, Himadri has managed to take control of her finances and change her family’s situation for the better. She now has a booming poultry business and has also managed to buy a boat for the family with her savings.

bKash saves the day

Posted on April 7, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

A 36-year mother and a BRAC health worker in Itna sub district, Nazma Akter will forever remain grateful to bKash for helping out in an emergency. She has adopted mobile money in many facets of her life, both professionally and personally. As a health worker, she was first introduced to bKash when BRAC began paying its frontline staff through their mobile wallets. Today when she goes from door to door through villages selling medicines, she never fails to mention that clients can pay through bKash. She is also using bKash to aid her ‘homegrown’ tailoring business. Her customers pay through bKash and she delivers dresses to their doorsteps.

Six months ago, Nazma’s 10-year old daughter fell down and broke her leg and the medical bills piled up. But she managed to collect money from her relatives in Dhaka quickly through bKash, which would have been a daunting task otherwise. Nazma cannot appreciate bKash enough whenever she talks about her daughter.

MFS for freedom

Posted on April 7, 2019April 30, 2019 by booklet_admin

Kaniz Fatema takes her 7-year old brother Rifat to school each day in Rajshahi’s Birostail village. Her businessman father bought her a smartphone when she passed her higher secondary school exams. Kaniz was the first to open a mobile wallet in her family when BRAC made school payments through bKash compulsory. She discovered further usefulness of bKash while still in college when she used to go for private tuition after sundown. The mobile wallet proved to be a safe store for her money, as Kaniz paid her tutor through bKash.

She could never have guessed that her own financial freedom would start with a mobile phone. A year on, there are a total of four bKash accounts in her household and her family has embraced all that mobile money has to offer. Fatema thinks she can do more with bKash in future. “bKash is introducing new features regularly. People also pay utility bills from their mobile wallets. I think there is a lot more to do,” she said when asked if she would do more with mobile money.

At the tip of the fingers

Posted on April 7, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

Azmira Khatun is a busy parent. She takes her eight-year-old son to Birostail primary school in Rajshahi every day, cooks for her family and also keeps tabs on the monthly household expenditures. She was introduced to bKash more than a year ago when BRAC schools initiated mobile payments. With the help of a BRAC field official, Azmira has learned to use bKash. Every month, she pays her BDT 300 savings installments from her mobile wallet.

Azmira was a novice user just a year back when she opened her own mobile wallet. She now believes that bKash makes life a lot easier. To her, the most exciting bKash feature is the airtime recharge and the provision to pay electricity bills. “Earlier, we had to stand in long lines to pay the bills. Now I can just do it from home.” Azmira thinks that bKash services are on the rise and one day she will be able to use bKash for most of her financial transactions on a regular basis.

Digital finance brings predictability

Posted on April 7, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

Hashi Ara is one of BRAC’s 23,078 teachers who get salary directly in their mobile wallets. She was introduced to bKash about a year back. “I learned it within days. It was easy. I had been using mobile phones for three years but couldn’t use bKash before.” Asked why not, she said that there had been no one to show her. When BRAC began paying salary through bKash, Hashi Ara was able to learn everything from the project staff. With a husband who is a truck-helper and a toddler son, Hashi Ara was always worried about managing her family’s finances. Her brother sent money through informal channels because banks were daunting. But that also made her finances unpredictable.

Now with her mobile wallet, uncertainty has been removed from the equation. The 27-year old receives around BDT 20,000 in remittance from her brother in Singapore every month. Using her new smartphone, Hashi Ara is happy to experiment with the bKash app and realises that the potentials are endless. “I saw some stores with barcode payments. I think I’ll buy something with the app.”

The friendly neighbourhood CSA

Posted on April 6, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

Sirajum Monira’s day begins as early as 8 am. As a CSA at BRAC’s Paba office, her workstation is about half an hour outside Rajshahi city, where she starts filling out KYC forms before most bKash agents have even opened their shops. Her job may seem straightforward, but is challenging in practice: to get BRAC’s female beneficiaries to shift from hard cash to mobile money. Monira helps open 80 mobile wallets every month, she estimates. Some of her many tasks include collecting and compiling data in English for the KYC forms, reminding clients to bring colour photos and national identity cards and filling out the forms correctly. Accurately collecting and writing down rows of data provided by the clients in long forms requires a lot of concentration. But she smiles through it all.

Monira also presents microfinance schemes to potential clients. “I can’t afford to make mistakes in the forms. People get called back if there is any mismatch. So I start early to keep a cool head,” she says, describing her additional duties. With over a thousand wallets opened for housewives — 1017 and counting — in the first 20 months, Monira is single-handedly ushering digital money into her community.

That is because, as many would argue, Monira’s amiable nature is like a breath of fresh air for the housewives who cannot jostle through the crowded markets to the bKash agent’s outlet. As acceptance of digital money has become widespread, so has the number of bKash users, Monira says. Even three years ago, women would be scared at the thought of money stored in mobile devices. “Now everyone knows bKash. I don’t even have to introduce the system sometimes. My job’s getting easier!” she beams.

However, Monira acknowledges the challenge of account security, and she works hard to convince clients to adopt measures to keep their information safe. She thinks that victims of fraud naturally become reluctant about bKash. “Just the other day, a client lost a lot of money after she disclosed her PIN over the phone.”

Nevertheless, digital finance has come a long way even amidst women with low literacy in Bangladesh’s villages. There was once a time when these very people deemed mobile phones to be like fantasy, and digital transactions magic. Now they recharge their airtime, receive money from their working husbands and even pay back loans with bKash all by themselves.

The ecosystem has changed, and ever welcoming CSAs like Monira are at the forefront of the movement.

Building confidence at the grassroots

Posted on April 6, 2019April 23, 2019 by booklet_admin

A housewife, Sharmin Akhter was introduced to mobile money by BRAC. Her husband Alamgir Kabir runs a poultry shop at Paba sub district, on the outskirts of Rajshahi. “He always used bKash, but I had no idea about it,” she says, explaining that she has only been using the mobile money service over the last year mainly to pay her 5-year-old son’s school fees. Sharmin has recently learned to pay her electricity bills through bKash, which she learned at BRAC training sessions.

The processes are still new to Sharmin but she is eager to explore the possibilities. bKash is currently her only means of storing money, as she has never owned a bank account. When asked, she said bKash is doing wonders and is everywhere now. “I understand that bKash is very useful. And I still have a lot to learn.”