This is the third blog in a three part series, which compares digital financial service offerings in Kenya.  The first blog focused on mobile money services, the second one analysed digital credit and this one analyses digital deposits. Digital deposit accounts are a controversial topic in digital finance.  Many analysts note that mobile money providers cannot offer interest on […]

This is the second blog in a three part series, which compares digital financial service offerings in Kenya.  The first blog focused on mobile money services and this second one delves into mobile banking services, focusing on digital credit.  These are certainly the most complicated but also the most exciting services given their potential to deepen financial […]

There has been a great deal of international discourse on the topic of mobile money after Kenya’s successful implementation of M-PESA, and as we recently wrote, the success is increasingly shared by banks. This is a clear victory for Kenyan customers, who now have more options to choose from.  However it also means that the financial […]

Equity Bank’s introduction of the thin SIM under the Equitel brand is an important development for the Kenyan financial market as it brings customers more choice in terms of providers, and will hopefully push product innovation further in a market that has had trouble evolving beyond payments.  We believe that to really make digital finance […]

Agents are critical to the customer experience of digital money services because they represent the first and most tangible service touch points for most end users. Agent networks are also probably the most operationally burdensome and costly element of the digital financial service value chain, typically costing anywhere between 40 and 80 percent of revenues generated from […]

In this report Ignacio Mas and Mike McCaffrey document the variety of ways in which digital financial service providers in developing countries have assembled and managed networks of retail stores as their agents for cash in/cash out payments and for account and product sales.

The session objective was to understand alternative methodologies for rural network.

This presentation highlighted three key considerations for agent banking: