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| Want peace and quiet? I know where to send you. Photo credit: Zoe So |
Mozambique is about twice the size of California with a population of 25 million. That's roughly 30 people per square kilometer, compared to Bangladesh's cozy 1,200 people per square kilometer. Most of its citizens live in "the bush," in small, scattered communities. Coming from Dhaka, it's startling how few people there are in the entire country--Maputo's traffic feels anemic, Nampula's sidewalks deserted. Yet all over these "big" cities, I see bright signs announcing mkesh and m-pesa, the local mobile money providers. On many street corners, young male agents stand in colorful vests---yellow for mkesh (mcel) and red for m-pesa (vodacom). It's easy to send money home, pay a cable bill, buy airtime, or even a lottery ticket. For the first few days, I thought Mozambique might already be an unknown success story in digital financial services.
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| Pick your poison! There's plenty of mobile money options to go around......if you're in town. |
But once you get out of the city, it's a different story. We met with a rural savings group that meets regularly to save and offers members low-interest loans. Savings groups are a fairly global strategy for savings primarily among communities that lack access to formal banking institutions. There are multiple models including the rotating credit and savings association (ROSCA), where all members make uniform contributions, and after each meeting, a different member takes home the whole amount for a big purchase, and the accumulating savings and credit association (ASCA), where the savings accumulate, members can take loans at their will, and the group splits the interest received at the end of the savings term (usually 6-12 months, depending on the group). The money is usually kept in a locked box, and a record is kept of the deposits.
The group we visited was an ASCA. To manage the finances, they had appointed an executive committee of three people. As is the common practice, their lockbox is kept by someone who does not have the keys to the locks; usually there are several locks and each leader only has the key to one of them. This makes it difficult for anyone to take the money unofficially.
In this group, members were really positive about saving as a group and everything seemed to be working pretty well. However, as the savings grew, no one wanted to keep the box with all of the cash deposits at home, since the security risk was too great. So a few months ago, the organizers decided to deposit the group's savings in a local bank. Through the help of Ophavela, the local organization that assisted them in establishing the savings group, they were able to create a joint savings account at a local bank and can make deposits using mkesh. The savings program is now much more secure and accountable, and should theoretically provide even more of an investment incentive to its members.
But creating a functional mobile money system is easier said than done. Since Mozambique lacks a widespread banking network, the draw of mobile money is to expand beyond the existing infrastructure to leverage personal mobile phones. But even mobile money systems rely on agents to enable people to convert cash into e-money. In remote areas, holding large sums of cash is a liability that few agents are willing to assume, and the potential profit of serving a small village community may not be worth it. Also, many agents don't have enough income to keep a huge amount of e-credit on their phone; they tend to purchase small amounts of e-credit frequently. Finally, a financial service organization needs to serve the agent network. Agents need access to e-money, and in turn want to minimize cash on hand. Frequent and convenient opportunities to exchange cash for e-credit better enable them to always be in business for customers.
The group we visited was an ASCA. To manage the finances, they had appointed an executive committee of three people. As is the common practice, their lockbox is kept by someone who does not have the keys to the locks; usually there are several locks and each leader only has the key to one of them. This makes it difficult for anyone to take the money unofficially.
In this group, members were really positive about saving as a group and everything seemed to be working pretty well. However, as the savings grew, no one wanted to keep the box with all of the cash deposits at home, since the security risk was too great. So a few months ago, the organizers decided to deposit the group's savings in a local bank. Through the help of Ophavela, the local organization that assisted them in establishing the savings group, they were able to create a joint savings account at a local bank and can make deposits using mkesh. The savings program is now much more secure and accountable, and should theoretically provide even more of an investment incentive to its members.
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| Group leaders counting out the members' savings deposits. One person counts, one records the amounts in the group's logbook, another in the individual saver's passbook, and others look on to make sure everything's done right. |
But creating a functional mobile money system is easier said than done. Since Mozambique lacks a widespread banking network, the draw of mobile money is to expand beyond the existing infrastructure to leverage personal mobile phones. But even mobile money systems rely on agents to enable people to convert cash into e-money. In remote areas, holding large sums of cash is a liability that few agents are willing to assume, and the potential profit of serving a small village community may not be worth it. Also, many agents don't have enough income to keep a huge amount of e-credit on their phone; they tend to purchase small amounts of e-credit frequently. Finally, a financial service organization needs to serve the agent network. Agents need access to e-money, and in turn want to minimize cash on hand. Frequent and convenient opportunities to exchange cash for e-credit better enable them to always be in business for customers.
On the day we visited, the group's "activator," who makes the mkesh transaction to the group's bank account (which requires 2 or the total 3 PIN numbers on the account, each only known by one group member), had 300 metical (~$8) in her mkesh account. The group's total deposits were about 3,000 metical (~$80), meaning that 27,000 metical (~$72) went into the cash box.
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| Group activator emptying her mobile wallet to transfer savings into the shared bank account. |
In Tanzania and Bangladesh, mobile money providers have outsourced this responsibility to regional "distributors," who travel from agent to agent and allow them to purchase more e-cash, or convert e-cash into money. The agents I met in Dar es Salaam had a distributor visit them at least once a day; this meant that they didn't have to worry very month about their cash/e-cash management because they could sort it out relatively frequently. They also didn't have to worry about having large amounts of cash at their store, which could attract theft.
In Bangladesh, as you move into smaller district towns, agents complain that distributors only come 1-2 times a week. In the most remote corners, agents report that they actually have to go the distributors' offices themselves, greatly increasing their costs and hassles. Reduced frequency also means that agents have to manage their own cash flows much more carefully and worry more about security.
But even the most remote corners of Bangladesh are more populated than this village in Mozambique, and arguably easier to get to. It's difficult to see how a distributor could serve an agent network efficiently in this region, and how an agent could even have enough business to find it a worthwhile use of time, while keeping a price point that makes the service accessible for local people. Studies in several contexts have found that indeed, agent networks tend to be densest in urban areas and follow major highways, indicating that there are still many underserved areas. They will likely stay underserved until mobile money companies can come up with better value proposition for local agents and distributors in these contexts.
This is where the whole ecosystem becomes important. How could it be easier for agents to maintain a consistent supply of e-credit and increase their value to the community (in turn increasing the transaction volume)? Maybe the distributors could let them post pay for the e-money credit, particularly as they build up a trusted transaction record. Mobile money companies can also think about both payment and cash-out options. The most successful one in Bangladesh has been buying mobile credit.
Could mobile money agents in Mozambique also act as brokers for common purchases from town, saving rural villagers time-consuming visits into the village for basic goods? People could pay via mobile money, and the goods get sent on the next bus, or with the distributors themselves when they make their rounds. If distributors have a bigger basket of products, maybe they have more incentive to visit remote agents more regularly. If access to microfinance opens up, perhaps agents could also double as credit officers and help with the repayment process.
Could mobile money agents in Mozambique also act as brokers for common purchases from town, saving rural villagers time-consuming visits into the village for basic goods? People could pay via mobile money, and the goods get sent on the next bus, or with the distributors themselves when they make their rounds. If distributors have a bigger basket of products, maybe they have more incentive to visit remote agents more regularly. If access to microfinance opens up, perhaps agents could also double as credit officers and help with the repayment process.
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