At last year’s Mobile World Congress, the GSMA mWomen Programme highlighted that women are an underserved market for Mobile Financial Services in developing countries. Launched in partnership with Visa, the 2013 report ‘Unlocking the Potential: Women and Mobile Financial Services in Emerging Markets’ found that around the world more than 2 billion people lack access to mobile financial services, and that the majority of them are women. Just one year later, Easypaisa, a joint venture between Telenor Pakistan and a Tameer micro finance bank, reinforced the message that women are a key demographic for mobile financial services by winning in both the Best Mobile Product or Service for Women in Emerging Markets and Best NFC/Mobile Money Product or Service categories at the 2014 Global Mobile Awards. Easypaisa’s recognition with these awards asserts how important addressing women’s wants and needs is to ensuring service scale and impact in the mobile money space. But what makes the Easypaisa model unique? And what made it stand out at this year’s Global Mobile Awards?

The Easypaisa proposition is based on a unique franchise model that, through a specific partnership with the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and CARE International, aims at equipping Pakistani women with Mobile Financial Services that meet their specific needs. Utilising innovative partnerships, taking a targeted approach toward women, and the scalability of the service constitute the recipe of Easypaisa’s success story and an excellent example of the power of mobile technology to boost women’s empowerment in developing countries through mobile financial services.

Utilising innovative partnerships

Pakistan has one of the lowest percentages of financial inclusion in the South Asian region [1].  A lack of access to financial services is even more pronounced in rural areas, where 67% of Pakistanis live. Nevertheless, the penetration of the conventional banking system is centred on urban locations and as a consequence, many people are inevitably denied access to financial services. This holds particularly true for women, whose financial isolation (only 10% of those who have access to banking services are women) is often aggravated by the cultural, technical and awareness barriers that they tend to face.

Partnering with the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and CARE International was instrumental for Easypaisa to identify how best to serve women in Pakistan and to provide financial services in a transparent and efficient manner. Specifically, BISP is a flagship national safety net initiative, aimed at providing a minimum income support package to the poorest, which were identified through the poverty scorecards, a proxy means test-based targeting instrument to objectively identify poor households. Through the female members, BISP provided the households with monthly social welfare disbursement of about US$2 per day. On the other hand, CARE International launched a ‘Cash for Work’ Programme for women to work as Road Maintenance staff and provide women with basic salary disbursements (about US$2 a day).

Taking a targeted approach towards women

By building upon these innovative projects, Easypaisa developed a proposition that overcomes geographical and logistical barriers by bringing financial services to local corner shops and therefore enabling women to register and get their disbursements without having to travel to a bank. While Easypaisa runs on mobile wallets, those women who were unable to own or have access to a mobile phone due to the cost of the handset or to cultural issues, are now enabled to have access to the system thanks to ATM cards that allow them to carry out transactions via POS terminals held at agent locations.

Easypaisa reported that the main challenge faced was the widespread technical and financial illiteracy of the Pakistani women.  However, providing training and carrying out workshops led by CARE for women on using mobile phones resulted in an enthusiastic response in using mobiles for financial services. Also, awareness was created through a targeted below-the-line marketing strategy, which was implemented by brand ambassadors who were tasked with assisting the beneficiaries during every step of the process.

Ensuring scalability

The Easypaisa proposition aims for scalability and commercial sustainability. To date, BISP has impacted the lives of 4.9 million beneficiaries, of which1.2 million people now have access to mobile financial services thanks to the Easypaisa initiative. BISP has currently identified 7.2 million people as poor and Easypaisa plans on continuing the partnership with BISP as the programme expands.

Within the CARE International Program, Easypaisa is the sole partner in providing financial services to nearly 4,000 women via mobile wallets. In order to open mobile wallets for these beneficiaries, Easypaisa and CARE provided the women with free handset s along with a Telenor SIM connection.

Also, CARE International ensures that the women are trained weekly on entrepreneurship and encouraged to save and invest their earnings. In the long-term, those women will likely engage in entrepreneurial activities that will benefit the entire household—thereby creating real value for women.

GSMA mWomen would like to congratulate the double-award winner for developing an initiative that brings mobile financial services into the hands of resource-poor women in Pakistan.