M-Banking and M-Payments Services in the Developing World: Complements or Substitutes for Trust and Social Capital?

Recently, a variety of initiatives have been launched around the globe, which seek to use the mobile phone to provide financial services to the ―unbanked‖. These services take a variety of forms—from longdistance remittances of large sums of money, to micropayments, to alternative currencies where the stored minutes (or credits) in a handset replace or augment cash holdings and transfers. Relatively little research has been conducted on the user-behaviors related to m-banking and m-payments systems in the developing world. This paper addresses some of the theoretical issues surrounding the use and impact of m-banking/m-payments systems, focusing on the intersections of financial and social networks, and considering how usage patterns may both reflect and alter the social and economic relationships within and between low-income individuals and households across the developing world. Thus the goals of the paper are twofold: on the one hand, it frames and identifies some issues germane to the design and deployment of mobile banking systems, to which the community of socio-technical/mobile phone researchers can provide a valuable input. On the other hand, it identifies m-banking/m-payments in the developing world as a fruitful domain for mobile research in general.