Ivory Coast is one of the countries with the largest long-standing diasporas from the neighboring countries especially the Burkinabè diaspora that amounts for almost 3 millions people. Remittances between the two countries are a major component of the flows between migrants and their family fellows in Burkina Faso (OIM, 2000). Most of the flows go from Ivory Coast to Burkina Faso but recent trends indicate the rising importance of remittances from Burkina Faso to Ivory Coast, driven by young Burkinabè born in Ivory Coast but studying in Burkina Faso (Neya, 2016). This context seems conducive for the launch of mobile money services that would allow tapping these sub-regional remittances flows. Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso are among the few countries where such services have recently been implemented targeting one of the largest diaspora in Sub-Saharan Africa. The interoperability between MM companies in both countries has been implemented since 2014. The former allows populations living in Ivory Coast to perform international transfers to their home-country. According to GSMA 2015 report, the recent launch of MM services to transfer money from Ivory Coast to Burkina Faso "was the first case of two operators from separate groups agreeing to interoperate their mobile money services to facilitate crossborder transfers" (GSMA, 2015: 4). Our study took advantage of the recent launch of this service to look at patterns of usage of MM for remittances.
The key findings of our study are:
- There is a strong spatial diffusion of mobile banking retailers in remote rural areas in both countries: where the migrants live and where the migrants’ families live in Burkina Faso.
-In terms of financial inclusion being digital or through formal banks, users of formal banks are not necessarily the users of MM. We observe a limited overlap of the two dynamics.
- MM usage is not only rooted in international remittances but also in other kind of services needed in that specific area: cash-in and cash withdrawals.
- We show that MM allows to socially and spatially diversify the end-beneficiaries of international remittances.
- Balancing mobile money with CFA Francs is still a central issue in rural areas.
- Women seem to remain heavily excluded from mobile money usage except women who use these services for their own business-trading activities.
- Intermediation being through local agents to perform the transfer or informal intermediaries to perform the last mile are key in the delivery process of MM-CFA francs cross-border transfers.
