Lagos Business School Faculty Director, Prof Olayinka David-West, delivered a presentation, on her preliminary research findings, titled “Mobile Money Utility and Financial Inclusion – Insights from Unbanked Poor End-Users” at the IMTFI 5th Annual Conference for Funded Researchers held at University of California – Irvine, USA.
This conference brought together the institute’s fifth-year award recipients who presented their preliminary findings. During the 4th session, David-West shared insights from the unbanked poor end users. She started her presentation by painting the true situation of the mobile money industry in Nigeria and Ghana. “Though banks are proud of what they are doing, the applications they offer are not significantly different from other phone-based services, such as paying bills for utilities and transportation, buying airtime, and sending and receiving money” she said.
David-West emphasised the different regulatory models, including bank-focused, bank-led, and non-bank led, which in Ghana meant leadership by the telecommunications sector. She described low awareness, reach, acceptance, poor infrastructure and cultural beliefs, among others, as limitations to the success of mobile money in these markets.
She concluded her presentation stating that earlier electronic banking products have not given people much confidence, and that regulatory models are still evolving.
IMTFI (Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion) is devoted to supporting innovative research on the financial lives of the world’s poor and on the potential for new technologies to change the monetary ecologies in which people seek to make a life for themselves.
