Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

This project set out to examine how 20 unbanked women of diverse backgrounds use different kinds of mobile money social/financial tools over the course of one year. We used ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative social network analysis (SNA) to measure how women in Western Kenya were using digital financial tools and social networks.How are digital financial tools used as a part of women’s’ social /financial networks? Adapting the financial diary method, we visited women every two weeks and recorded how they used digital financial tools such as digital credit and M-Pesa; how they used cash, either for payments, for keeping in a secret place, or for gift-giving; and how women used in-kind value such as food, clothing and plants as gifts and exchanges. The study sought to understand how women’s use of digital financial services fits in to existing social networks and financial networks that include digital finance, cash money, mobile money transfer, and other media of exchange (Zelizer, 2000).