The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money

Abstract

Substituting minutes for money: In developing countries, bank branches and fixed-line telecommunications are scarce, whereas mobile phones are plentiful. These factors have led to the use of mobile money, whereby money can be deposited to an account linked to a phone, transferred to other users, and converted back into cash. Suri and Jack show that increased access to mobile money has increased long-term consumption in Kenya and reduced the number of households in extreme poverty. Science , this issue p. 1288