Branchless and Mobile Banking Solutions for the Poor: A Survey
This paper reviews the emerging literature on branchless and mobile banking in developing countries over the last five years. It studies the various definitions and model taxonomies employed on mobile, and branchless banking. It examines the take-up and usage patterns of customers, their socio-economic impact, and various regulatory issues.
Branchless banking systems take advantage of ubiquitous, real-time mobile communications networks to bring banking services into everyday retail stores, alleviating the lack of banking infrastructure in communities where poor people live and work. Findings of the study include:
- Around 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to formal financial services while 1 billion of them have a mobile phone;
- Most branchless banking deployments are quite recent so there is a shortage of substantial empirical evidence relating to them;
- M-PESA in Kenya has shown phenomenal success and has been a catalyst for much of the research.
The study concludes that there is a real customer demand for convenient money transfers, payments, and savings. This paper aims to stimulate further research and help policymakers and practitioners focus their continued efforts in creating an enabling environment for branchless banking.
