“We usually talk about the need for formal financial services to be simple. But what we need is for services to be intuitive.” The author applies it to account features.

As we move from defining and storing value in physical commodities (cash, chickens, jewellery etc.) to digital money, how do we help poor people understand and use the brave new world of e-money? How do poor people manage their money? Why are basic No-Frills Accounts so unsuccessful? How might we take the answers to these […]

Along with MicroSave, Ignacio Mas shares his experiences and learnings from MetaMon project – that how difficult it is to create a generalizable metaphor for money management.

What drives the financial decision making of the poor? Here MicroSave team heads out to decipher the inherent thinking process behind these decisions through its research project – MetaMon.

This blog delves deep into the whys of financial decisions and how people think of money. The author argues understanding mental models and metaphors are key to product design.

In 2012 Ignacio Mas worked with MSC to look at the state of digital financial services in India, the type of products that poor people want, and the role of microfinance institutions/SHGs in digital financial services systems. Ignacio also ran a training for all MSC staff, and we then asked him to record some of […]

This report summarises the intent, activities, outputs and key lessons from an ambitious program of field work which sought to capture vividly and succinctly the essence of how ordinary people think about the management of their money and resources.

We interviewed Ignacio Mas to find out what he thinks about mobile banking and its role in increasing financial inclusion.