IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/ifprid/2295.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Catalyzing financial inclusion: Using incentives to promote mobile money use in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • de Brauw, Alan
  • Gilligan, Daniel O.
  • Herskowitz, Sylvan
  • Roy, Shalini

Abstract

Mobile money can be a vehicle for improving financial access, particularly among disadvantaged populations. For mobile money systems to play this role, though, members of disadvantaged groups must both enroll in and begin to use mobile money systems. In this paper, we describe a randomized trial conducted in collaboration with a bank in Somali region, Ethiopia, that attempted to stimulate use among recent mobile money enrollees in areas near refugee camps. We provide one group with a small transfer to their mobile money account and another group is told they will receive a small transfer if they first make three transactions of any type within a promotional period. The unconditional transfer induces a 9.3 percentage point increase in customers making at least one transaction, while the conditional transfer has no significant effect. The effect is larger among men, but there is evidence that it also induces use among women.

Suggested Citation

  • de Brauw, Alan & Gilligan, Daniel O. & Herskowitz, Sylvan & Roy, Shalini, 2024. "Catalyzing financial inclusion: Using incentives to promote mobile money use in Ethiopia," IFPRI discussion papers 2295, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2295
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstreams/e0ae89df-c835-4800-a149-756e10feface/download
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2295. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.