Mobile Money Could Help Alleviate Poverty, Study Says

Poverty is something that grips a significant portion of the world. Even with all of the advancements in technology and economic influence, many are still struggling to make ends meet. However, a new study suggests that giving people access to mobile money might help, as it has done for households in Kenya.

A study on how Kenyan households have been holding up with regards to the financial effects of having access to mobile money has been going on since 2008, Phys.org reports. The person behind the research is Tavneet Suri, an economist from MIT.

Services pertaining to mobile money usually involved being able to store currency and then use it as a means of payment. This isn’t exactly a new concept for those in the west, what with online shopping being a particularly huge industry. For those in Kenya, however, the effects include being able to raise themselves out of poverty.

The impact isn’t that huge in the grand scheme of things since the number of households that were raised from poverty was only at about two percent. Even so, it still presents a promising concept, which might be useful when applied on a broader scale.

It would seem that women were the most to benefit from mobile-based financial services, Popular Science reports, with many moving from farming to business. Thanks to mobile money, transferring funds is just a text away, thus removing some of the biggest barriers to getting anything done via payments.

The people in Kenya seem to have realized just how big of a deal mobile money is as well, with over 96 households in over 93 countries using the service in one way or another. The most popular of these mobile money services is M-PESA and part of making use of such services include mobile money agents. They are basically the human equivalent of ATMs.