Informal Financial Practices in the Digital Age: Between Permanence and Change[Les pratiques tontinières à l'ère du numérique : entre permanences et mutations]

In developing countries where the informal and formal sectors coexist, tontines have shown a real ability to adapt to ever-changing environments. Just like microfinance, these old age financial institutions are getting more and more digital, going online. Alongside impressive innovations in the field of digital microfinance, lies a wide range of innovations in the digitalization of tontines. Informal financial practices in the age of digital transformation point to the existence of a complex relationship between stability and change of the principles that underlie this form of traditional finance. The most noticeable changes are assimilated to reactional innovations to the constraints on the participants and involve the use of e-money, the dematerialization of the place of meetings and the register of transactions but also the granting of loans following an approach which, from a financial point perspective, is similar to the opening of an option. Despite these changes, there is a persistence of some key principles such as solidarity and reciprocity. Beyond this relationship however, the question of the informality of these practices which are performed more and more via mobile money arises with a certain sharpness.