Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

This paper looks at dispensing cash grants to Indigenous People (IP) beneficiaries in Palawan, Philippines. It reports the results of a survey of IP beneficiaries, focus group discussions (FGDs) with cash mobility mapping exercises and key informant interviews to explore how different transfer modalities for conditional cash transfer (CCT) grants affect the way IPs perceive money and financial technology. It looks at the possible socio-cultural changes in how they consume, save and utilize the cash grants given to them.

The results suggest that CCT proponents will need to think about available infrastructure and distinct beneficiary segment practices related to consumption, saving and accessing market for goods when designing social transfer schemes especially when applying electronic channels. In the case of IPs, while some already use cash and mobile phones and go to public markets for their household needs, there are still some groups - especially from more remote areas - that predominantly practice non-cash ways of payments/exchange (barter), do not use mobile phones and rarely go to public markets to buy household needs. For this sub-segment, there are signs that CCT has served as a tool to introduce the concept of money, which has consequently affected the way they perform their financial transactions (e.g., from barter to cash-based transactions).

There was also no evidence yet that the difference in disbursement modes has translated into any disparity in consumption priorities among beneficiaries or to differential improvements in formal savings. Saving through non-cash items remained as the most popular mechanism for savings for both groups. However, we have uncovered practices and a growing mind-set among cash card beneficiaries associated with the denomination of banknotes that opens opportunities for savings and mobile and electronic money development.