AudiencScapes

Poor people have surprisingly complicated financial lives
given how little money they have. 
You would, too, if your “$1 a day” income actually came in the form of
$60 on one day, and no dollars for the next two months. The poor understand their critical need to both budget and save money.

The consensus seemed to be that mobile services are the way forward for
Africa. However, once the low-hanging fruit among potential users has
been plucked, so to speak, reaching the poorest and most remote segments
of the population will require additional effort.

The World Bank's CGAP Technology Blog recently posted an article about
InterMedia's AudienceScapes' Haiti Mobile Money Tracker.  A tool created to
examine a series of household surveys, commissioned by the Gates Foundation in
2010, that helped monitor the impact of USAID and the Gates Foundation's Haiti
Mobile Money Initiative.  An initiative that featured a $10 million fund to
provide incentives to mobile service providers to quickly launch and expand
mobile money (m-money) services. 

The country’s recent political and economic crises mean that Zimbabwe has
been late to experiment with advances in technology. This is finally changing,
as suggested by the recent introduction of mobile money products. Institutions
are clamoring to launch products to profit from this untapped market.

InterMedia Senior Project Manager Giovanna Monteverde on a recent research trip to Haiti visited with a Digicel Tcho Tcho mobile money agent to find out more about this new service. Giovanna also observed the great difficulty most Haitians must go through to perform everyday financial transactions.

Recent research indicates that M-PESA is reaching down Kenya’s socio-economic spectrum, thus providing efficient and affordable financial services to those at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). But what about in neighboring Tanzania, a relatively poorer country where mobile money was notably slower to take off? Are such services getting to the unbanked and other economically excluded residents?

As the number of mobile phone subscribers in Ghana increases, so does the market for mobile money services. The majority of Ghanaians lack any formal bank account. Kwami Ahiabenu II reports on how mobile money could change the shape of financial transactions in the country.By Kwami Ahiabenu IIAn estimated 80 percent of Ghanaians are “unbanked” – meaning they conduct their transactions outside the banking sector with no access to financial services. Products like “mobile money,” that enable safe and secure money transfers without the use of a bank account, could have a major impact on this unserved segment of the population. Mobile money gives anyone with a mobile phone the ability to transfer money, make cash payments and conduct other financial transactions over the phone.

By Dinfin Mulupi(Waitaluk, Kenya)--Jane Natoo, a shop owner in this village in Rift Valley Province, used to have to carry thousands of shillings in cash when she went to town to buy stock for her shop. It was an inconvenient and highly risky way to do business. Jane isn't toting big wads of cash anymore. She signed up for the recently launched M-Kesho service, a savings account spinoff of the hugely successful M-Pesa mobile money service operated by Safaricom Ltd. “M-Kesho guarantees me security, since I bank the money at an M-Pesa agent, then travel to town and withdraw [cash] from the bank and do my shopping,” she said.  “It saves me both time and money spent traveling to town to access a bank.