Mobile Technology, Mobile Money and Financial Services in Emerging Economies

Abstract

We use data collected by the Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) research and knowledgesharing program that is managed by InterMedia to investigate the uptake of mobile technology, mobile money and financial services in Bangladesh, India, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda. We also investigated by country the predictors of use of the most popular mobile money product for these six countries. It was not possible to undertake an econometric analysis for Kenya due to the lack of data on the dependent variable and some predictors. We can infer from the pooled cross-sectional data for Bangladesh, India, Nigeria and Pakistan that the following are significant predictors of using mobile money: (i) possession of a job or income source; (ii) possessing a mobile phone; (iii) possessing a bank account; (iv) degree of trust in mobile money services; (v) degree of trust in mobile money agents; as well as (vi) basic literacy.