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.