The Role of User-Agent Interactions on Mobile Money Practices in Kenya and Tanzania

TL;DR

This study explores how users and agents in Kenya and Tanzania adapt mobile money practices through workarounds, revealing implications for security, privacy, and policy in mobile financial ecosystems.

Contribution

It uncovers the informal workarounds in mobile money interactions, highlighting their impact on security, privacy, and regulatory considerations in African contexts.

Findings

Users and agents develop workarounds to overcome ecosystem limitations.

Workarounds include informal loans, reliance on relationships, and transaction modifications.

These practices introduce new risks and challenge existing security and privacy frameworks.

Abstract

Digital financial services have catalyzed financial inclusion in Africa. Commonly implemented as a mobile wallet service referred to as mobile money (MoMo), the technology provides enormous benefits to its users, some of whom have long been unbanked. While the benefits of mobile money services have largely been documented, the challenges that arise -- especially in the interactions between human stakeholders -- remain relatively unexplored. In this study, we investigate the practices of mobile money users in their interactions with mobile money agents. We conduct 72 structured interviews in Kenya and Tanzania (n=36 per country). The results show that users and agents design workarounds in response to limitations and challenges that users face within the ecosystem. These include advances or loans from agents, relying on the user-agent relationships in place of legal identification requirements, and altering the intended transaction execution to improve convenience. Overall, the workarounds modify one or more of what we see as the core components of mobile money: the user, the agent, and the transaction itself. The workarounds pose new risks and challenges for users and the overall ecosystem. The results suggest a need for rethinking privacy and security of various components of the ecosystem, as well as policy and regulatory controls to safeguard interactions while ensuring the usability of mobile money.