The Rise of Mobile Money in Kenya: The Changing Landscape of M-PESA’s Impact on Financial Inclusion
Abstract
M-PESA, the hugely popular mobile money system in Kenya, has been celebrated for its
potential to “bank the unbanked” and increase access to financial services. This paper
provides evidence to support this idea and explores mechanisms through which this
might be the case. It specifically looks at the savings products held by individuals
and how this changes in relation to M-PESA use. It then constructs an index for measuring
the extent to which individuals are integrated into the formal financial sector. This
paper argues that M-PESA’s effect on financial inclusion is a growing phenomenon,
which suggests that keeping pace with the rapid evolutions of this mobile money system
should be a high priority for researchers. As this paper elucidates, M-PESA has become
notably more integrated with the formal financial sector in 2013 as compared to 2009,
which holds implications for user behavior.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
EconomicsPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8604Citation
Zhu, Hong (2014). The Rise of Mobile Money in Kenya: The Changing Landscape of M-PESA’s Impact on Financial
Inclusion. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8604.Collections
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