Kenya's mobile revolution and the promise of mobile savings

By Gabriel Demombynes, Aaron Thegeya. 2012

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mobile revolution has transformed the lives of Kenyans, providing not just communications but also basic financial access in the form of phone-based money transfer and storage, led by the M-PESA system introduced in 2007. Currently, 93 percent of Kenyans are mobile phone users and 73 percent are mobile money customers. Additionally, 23 percent use mobile money at least once a day. New potential for mobile money has come with the rise of interest-earning bank-integrated mobile savings systems, beginning with the launch of the M-KESHO system in March 2010. The authors examine the mobile savings phenomenon, using data collected in a special survey in late 2010. They show that the usage of bank-integrated mobile savings systems like M-KESHO remains limited and largely restricted to better-off Kenyans. However, what the authors term"basic mobile savings"-- the use of simple mobile money systems as a repository for funds -- is widespread, including among those who are otherwise unlikely to have any savings. Holding other characteristics constant, those who are registered for M-PESA are 32 percent more likely to report having some savings.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Information Systems, Media Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/140ee2c25cae66c6a791538762af1d7d6e1ee962

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Information Systems

In Media Technology

Citations in the corpus

The Role of Knowledge Economy in African Business (2016, background): “Accordingly, the ICT (especially the mobile revolution) has substantially transformed business in Africa by providing not only communication facilities but also access to finance to a previously unbanked fraction of the population (Jonathan & Camilo, 2008; Demombynes & Thegeya, 2012; Asongu, 2014).”
Mobile Money and the Economy: A Review of the Evidence (2018, methodology): “The specification is not comparable to that of Demombynes and Thegeya (2012), which included log income (highly significant), wealth quintiles and marital status for a far larger survey (Table 1).”
Building financial resilience through financial and digital literacy in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (2020, background): “…the impacts of DFS on saving behavior, finding that mobile money significantly increased the likelihood of savings and money transfers and reduced the propensity to use informal savings channels (Apiors & Suzuki, 2018; Demombynes & Thegeya, 2012; Mbiti & Weil, 2015; Ouma, Odongo, & Were, 2017).”
Can Mobile Money Help Firms Mitigate the Problem of Access to Finance in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa? (2018, background): “See also Demombynes and Thegeya (2012) who study a relationship between individual users of mobile money and their saving habits from Kenya.”
Mobile Money and Financial Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Moderating Role of Social Networks (2018, unknown): “…(2008) observe that many lives, especially of the rural poor households have been transformed by the mobile phone revolution, which has provided not only communication but also access to basic ﬁ nancial services through phone-based money transfer and storage (see also Demombynes & Thegeya, 2012).”