Three ideas to drive women’s use of mobile money in Kenya

This is a guest post written by Georgia Barrie from the GSMA’s Connected Women programme. This month Connected Women has released a report examining the gender gap in mobile money usage in Kenya and providing recommendations for mobile financial service providers to better target women. This post was originally published on the Connected Women blog.

This year marks eight years since the first mobile money service was launched in Kenya in 2007. Today approximately 58% of the Kenyan adult population are using mobile money at least once a month with multiple millions also using value added services such as bill payments, savings and loans. However, despite the popularity of mobile money in Kenya, there remains a persistent gender gap in the use of mobile financial services.

In March this year the Connected Women programme published “Bridging the gender gap: Mobile access and usage in low- and middle-income countries” which revealed that while men and women are similarly likely to have received a mobile money payment in the last week, women are around 26% less likely to have sent mobile money than men. Data published by the Commercial Bank of Africa also shows that as few as 41% of users of M-Shwari, Kenya’s most popular mobile savings and loans product, are female.

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This gender gap represents a loss to women, many of whom are yet to reap the benefits of mobile financial services, and a significant missed revenue opportunity for Kenya’s mobile industry. In our latest report we analyse the existing data around male and female usage of mobile money and, through targeted ethnographic research, deep dive into the barriers to greater usage amongst rural women in Kenya. Bringing this together, we identify three practical ways that mobile financial service providers in Kenya could drive a step-change in mobile money usage amongst Kenyan women.

  1. Innovative marketing techniques could increase adoption of new services amongst women
    • Surveys such as Intermedia’s Financial Inclusion Insights have shown that women are less likely to have heard of new mobile financial services or know how to use them. Women are also more likely than men to say that they are worried about making a mistake and losing money when using mobile services
    • Consumer insights research shows that women are significantly more likely to try new services if they have been shown how to use them by a friend or family member. CGAP research also found that people with 5 or more mobile money users in their social network are over 3.5 times more likely to adopt than people with just 1
    • Today the vast majority of people in Kenya find out about new services through ATL marketing. However, there are a wealth of more sophisticated techniques that could be used to encourage adoption. Analysis of voice, SMS and mobile money records could be used to identify and target the most likely adopters. Incentive schemes could also encourage early adopters to sign up friends and family to new services.
  1. A change to the current fee structure is needed before rural women can go cashless
  • Focus groups with men and women showed that women in Kenya are often more meticulous money managers and are more likely than men to say that transaction fees are “too expensive”. Research suggests that women are also more likely to make smaller, more frequent transactions, reducing overall value for money
  • For many women with low household incomes, the current fee structure is a significant barrier to frequent use of mobile money. If the aim is to drive a “cashless” economy then a freemium or subscription payment model may be needed to incentivise the use of mobile money for small, in-person transactions.
  1. New products needed to capture transactions in savings groups and agriculture
    • While savings and loans product M-Shwari has seen considerable success in rural Kenya, the vast majority of rural women continue to save and take loans through savings groups or chamas. Very few of these women use mobile financial services to deposit or withdraw from savings groups as available products are seen as expensive, unsecure or are not widely marketed.
    • Smallholder farming is another area that continues to be dominated by cash transactions and studies suggest women constitute up to 80% of Kenya’s smallholder farmers. Small, frequent and in-person transactions make mobile money an expensive means of buying and selling for many female farmers. Similarly, many agribusinesses with large farmer networks view current Bulk Pay mobile money services as too costly.
    • Together savings groups and smallholder farming represent a significant proportion of transactions made in rural areas and the use of cash in these areas has halo effects across the ecosystem. The challenge remains for mobile financial service providers in Kenya to develop products that really work for rural women.

 

Download the full report Women and Mobile Money – Insights from Kenya

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