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ABSTRACT
The authors examine the use of mobile money in the context of cross-border remittances in West Africa. Relying on mixed methods and a multi-sited empirical strategy they look at both the sending and receiving conditions of mobile money transfers. By looking at money as socially embedded and the role of migrants in the production of a transnational space, their results highlight that uptake and usage of mobile money for remittances are shaped by a transnational living pattern. At the same time, mobile money also contributes to strengthening and reshaping this pattern. By showing that conversion of virtual money to cash may be performed by brokers that live far away from the end recipient, the paper highlights an important gap between spatial distribution of mobile money infrastructure and the social mediation that supports e-money flows. Cash-based transactions, in turn, are shown to play a key role in the social mediation dynamic.
Acknowledgments
We are thankful to Simon Barussaud, Dieudonné Ilboud, Stéphane Reuse and Camil Compaoré for their support to the research process. We are also grateful to Isabelle Guérin, Hadrien Saiag, Jean-Michel Servet for their useful reading of earlier versions of the paper. This research has been sponsored by the Institute for Money, Technology, & Financial Inclusion, UC-Irvine, CA, USA. The grant number was OPP1031657. Solène Morvant-Roux is a SNSF-Professorship grantee.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. This research was sponsored, for the period of 2015–2016, by the Institute for Money, Technology, & Financial Inclusion, UC-Irvine, CA, USA. The grant number was OPP1031657.
2. Unfortunately, Findex does not report the data on international remittances.
3. According to GSMA Citation2015 report, the recent launch of MM services to transfer money from Côte d’Ivoire to Burkina Faso ‘was the first case of two operators from separate groups agreeing to interoperate their mobile money services to facilitate cross-border transfers’ (GSMA, Citation2015, p. 4).
4. The situation is going to change by 2020 with the adoption of a new currency and the integration of new countries such as Ghana and Nigeria.
5. The five localities are the following: Pogréagui, Gniti Touadji, Oussoukro, Oupoyo and Meagui.
6. We report the main variables for Sub-sample 1 and Sub-sample 2, such as head age (48.5/44.6); Polygamous (45.7/46); Muslims (48.5/49.2); Ethnic group-Mossi (80/64.6); Illetrism (51.4/47.6) and number of household members in Côte d’Ivoire (2.8/2.4).
7. For instance, car-drivers used to carry money for migrants (informal delivery channels) now use MM to secure cash while travelling: cash-in in Côte d’Ivoire and cash-out in Burkina Faso. So even people we interviewed who rely on informal channels (less than 10% of our sample) such as bus drivers to send money to Burkina Faso, would indirectly use MM.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Solène Morvant-Roux
Solène Morvant-Roux is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva. She is funded by a grant from the Swiss National Research Foundation. She has conducted several research projects on financialization, looking at popular segments' financial practices in the context of financialized capitalisms in Latin America and in Africa.
Anna Peixoto-Charles
Anna Peixoto-Charles is a doctoral candidate at the University of Geneva. Her work focuses on the linkages between financialization and commodification among vulnerable population segments. She mixes quantitative data analysis on large surveys with qualitative in-depth analysis on subsamples.