Mobile money solutions for a smartphone-dominated world

Abstract

Mobile money is playing a critical role in promoting financial
inclusion in developing countries. Simultaneously, continued price
declines are placing entry-level smartphones within reach of a
rapidly increasing fraction of the global population. In addition,
many of the unbanked live in urban or peri-urban regions where
wireless network coverage is good and/or rapidly improving with
continued wireless network infrastructure build-outs. This paper
addresses the intersection of these trends, which provides both
opportunities and challenges. The opportunity lies in using the
interface and options available in a smartphone to provide mobile
money solutions that are more flexible, more accessible to persons
with a wide range of literacy levels, and more secure than
solutions based on traditional ‘feature’ phones. The challenge,
which the work described in this paper aims to address, lies in
actually designing the interfaces and architectures to provide
these solutions.