Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

While the population of Mayong is “banked” (most families have bank accounts at the local branch of the State Bank of India), very few villagers actually use the bank: long lines, a perpetually broken ATM, and paperwork in English are irritating inconveniences. Mobile money would seem to offer a convenient service. But, mobile phones are not “private property,” so to speak; they are shared and passed around freely. Data is shared and it is common for someone to pick up another’s mobile phone without asking and look through the pictures, music files, or whatever data can be found therein. Hence, there is a potential risk of revealing too much if one can access one’s secret accounts in another’s mobile phone. Furthermore, none of my friends in Mayong were interested in the technology as a means of payment. They were more interested in how they could share money with friends and family—how to make gifts and how to recharge a negative prepaid mobile balance from someone else’s positive balance. In so many words, when I showed them my mobile money account, they were interested in how it could be used as a shared account, the features of which I will turn to in my next blog post.