Understanding Interface Design and Mobile Money Perceptions in Latin America

TL;DR

This paper explores how interface design influences mobile money adoption in Latin America, emphasizing the importance of transparent workflows to build user trust and increase financial inclusion.

Contribution

It identifies key interface features that impact user trust and adoption, providing insights for designing more effective mobile money applications in Latin America.

Findings

Visualizing transaction workflows increases user trust.

Transparent interfaces improve mobile money adoption.

Design features significantly influence perceptions and usage.

Abstract

Mobile money can facilitate financial inclusion in developing countries, which usually have high mobile phone use and steady remittance activity. Many countries in Latin America meet the minimum technological requirements to use mobile money, however, the adoption in this region is relatively low. This paper investigates the different factors that lead people in Latin America to distrust and therefore not adopt mobile money. For this purpose, we analyzed 27 mobile money applications on the market and investigated the perceptions that people in Latin America have of such interfaces. From our study, we singled out the interface features that have the greatest influence in user adoption in developing countries. We identified that for the Latin America market it is crucial to create mobile applications that allow the user to visualize and understand the workflow through which their money is traveling to recipients. We examined the significance of these findings in the design of future mobile money applications that can effectively improve the use of electronic financial transactions in Latin America.