Mobile Money, Interoperability, and Financial Inclusion / Markus K. Brunnermeier, Nicola Limodio, Lorenzo Spadavecchia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brunnermeier, Markus K.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Limodio, Nicola.

Spadavecchia, Lorenzo.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w31696.

NBER working paper series no. w31696

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.

Summary:

This paper investigates the tradeoff between competition and financial inclusion resulting from the vertical integration between mobile network and money operators. Joining newly assembled data on mobile money fees through the WayBack machine, with sources on network coverage and financials, we examine the staggering across African operators and countries of platform interoperability - a policy that promotes transactions and competition across mobile money operators. Our results show that interoperability benefits users by lowering mobile money fees and their dispersion across operators. However, these positive effects are offset by a decrease in mobile towers and network coverage, especially in rural and poor districts, which, in turn, leads to a lower financial inclusion. We note that combining interoperability with subsidies for rural telecommunications delivers lower fees without hurting coverage.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2023.