Innovation Forum: Mobile Money for Social Innovation

By Tasmia Rahman

What if you could get reimbursed for your 200 taka hartal transport allowances through your mobile phone without having to fill out forms or stand in lines? Pay cash incentives and rebates to your frontline staff and clients with a single click of a mouse? Can you imagine an entire distribution network set-up using only digital payments? 

Across the global South, mobile money is creating scope for new opportunities and innovations. In Kenya, microfinance institutions are operating through cashless branches where all transactions are conducted through mobile phones and loans are disbursed to clients in remote locations within 72 hours. Staff incentives in health interventions are calculated and paid via mobile phones without requiring any manual calculations or transactions. In addition to enhancing security and efficiency of operations, mobile money has the potential to make basic and essential services like healthcare, water, energy, etc. more accessible and affordable to poor people.

While East Africa has seen a rapid growth in the integration and use of mobile money technology in the development sector, with over 70 million mobile phone users, 7 million plus mobile money account holders and over 20 mobile money service providers, Bangladesh is not far behind.

At the October Innovation Forum, Greg Chen from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, shared examples of effective and efficient applications of mobile payment solutions for social innovation in other countries and discussed the potential of this technology in the Bangladeshi context (see presentation below). At this interactive session, participants from across BRAC programmes shared ideas on how mobile money could improve their existing service delivery models and new products that could be created.

Link to Greg Chen’s presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/BRACSocialInnovationLab/mobile-money-for-social-innovation

Amanda Misiti