Mobile Banking Study: Experiences and Perspectives of Microfinance Institutions

This report presents findings from a survey on the impact and interest of MFIs in branchless banking, particularly mobile phone banking. Triple Jump Advisory Services commissioned Microfinance Opportunities to help develop and conduct the survey on branchless banking activities, impact, and intentions of Triple Jump's investees.The survey highlighted the need to focus on getting the basics of market research, customer orientation, regulation awareness, technology stability, training, and on-going performance management properly understood and implemented for this new channel to be a success. Findings include:

• Most MFIs in the sample were not offering services through a mobile money platform at the time of the survey, but were interested in doing so;
• Many had begun exploring the channel and had conducted activities like upgrading their management information system or meeting with mobile network operators;
• Most MFIs stated that their goals in offering mobile financial services were to decrease customer costs for banking, make it easier to transact, and to increase customer outreach;
• There was general consensus that mobile phone banking could reduce operational costs for financial institutions;
• Challenges anticipated included concerns about having sufficient internal and external technological capacity, and customers lack of knowledge.