Vritti January 2020 | Page 19

vritti Mobilution January 2020 19 finance and the benefits of digitization of financial services in rural areas. Impart Financial Education to Make Mobile Money Services a Success Mobile money services have to be promoted with adequate information to make them successful. For example, along with launching a mobile money-based savings club service, mobile money providers need to partner with NGOs or deploy agents to execute several tasks as well. These include working with traditional savings groups, explaining the service to them, describing the benefits of mobile money, demonstrating how to use the service, addressing queries, et all, thus, extending long-term support to enable the members of the savings club to seamlessly evolve from cash to digital. In villages, mobile money providers have to leverage community leaders, NGOs or deploy mobile money agents to extend information pertaining to Mobile money providers need to think ‘out of box’ to inculcate healthy financial habits in the rural population. For example, Shwe Toe, a financial and digital literacy application for women in Myanmar, launched by a mobile money provider, is using Gamification to promote healthy financial practices amongst women. The Shwe Toe application uses a game where a young girl’s grandmother presents her with calf, and through different levels of the game, starts and expands her dairy business and eventually purchase a home, thus learning [4] various financial concepts . This article has merely scratched the surface of the options available to expand mobile money services and financial inclusion amongst rural and remote customers. Surely, mobile money providers will usher in multiple innovative ways to conquer this last frontier of financial exclusion. [4] FinDev Gateway About the author Mohit Bhargava has twelve years of work experience in product marketing and research in the telecom and digital payment domains. At Comviva, he is serving as Deputy General Manager in product marketing for the mobile financial solutions portfolio. His areas of function primarily include evangelizing Comviva’s mobile financial products and their impact on transforming the financial landscape globally.