The Role of Mobile Money in Moderating Financial Exclusion: A Tanzanian Experience

Abstract

Prior to the advent of mobile money, the banking sector in most of the developing countries excluded certain segments of the population. The excluded populations were deemed as a risk to the banking sector. The banking sector did not work with cash stripped and the financially disenfranchised people. Financial exclusion persisted to incredibly higher levels. Those excluded did not have: bank accounts, savings in financial institutions, access to credit, loan and insurance services. The advent of mobile money moderated the very factors of financial exclusion that the banks failed to resolve. This paper explains how mobile money moderates the factors of financial exclusion that the banks and microfinance institutions have always failed to moderate. The paper seeks to answer the following research question: 'How has mobile money moderated the factors of financial exclusion that other financial institutions failed to resolve between 1960 and 2008? Tanzania has been chosen as a case study to show how mobile has succeeded in moderating financial exclusion in the period after 2008.