Dhana Labha: A financial management application to underbanked communities in Rural Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper presents findings from field trial of a mobile application called ‘Dhana Labha’ in a rural Sri Lankan community. Dhana Labha was designed to be used by the community members to manage their personal finances, oversee their performance in managing multiple microfinance loans and assist in loan collection. We distributed the application among thirty eight microfinance clients and studied their use over a period of six months. Our findings show that the use of Dhana Labha had a positive impact on existing local practices and financial awareness while prompting the participants to develop unexpected new practices around microfinance workflows. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding existing sociocultural practices for designing applications, as they strongly affect and shape the use of technology in a constrained setting.