With the development of ubiquitous technologies that support the digitization of money, research is needed on how individuals’ private life practices are affected by new technological financial systems and how cash-based practices can inform their design. In this article, we report the cash-based monetary practices of one Ethiopian rural community and identify their implications for the design of new financial technology. Particularly, we focus on addressing the question, What characteristic features should go into the design of mobile money application(s) to embody a rural Ethiopian community’s money practices in social (marriage and death) and religious contexts? Primary data on everyday practices of the community were collected. Analysis of our data reveals that new financial technology design should support lived experiences such as embedded social meaning, segregated and aggregate money control, restricted money use, identity extension and hiding, refusal and acceptance of donations, disclosed and secret money practices, and assigning aesthetics to money. The article concludes by discussing possible ways of mapping these concepts into financial system design, thus contributing toward the development of cashless transactions and a cashless society.

Current mobile money systems provide users with hierarchical user interface and represent money as a positive rational numbers of the form 1, 3, 4.87...N. However, research indicates that rural communities that cannot read and write have a challenge entering such numbers in to mobile money system. Navigating through hierarchical text menu is also difficult to illiterate individuals. The present study uses concepts like memory placeholders, dragging & dropping; swiping, temporary holding space, and frequency counter and proposed a system that consists of three layers. The first layer denotes user interface and uses photos of currency notes, second layer is a placeholder memory that keep record of the frequency of currency bill, and the last layer keeps record of the total digital money in the system. We believe that the proposed system enables illiterate to identify currency notes while making payments and receiving payments, count digital money while making payments and or receiving payments during transaction.