Presentation at "Impact Evaluation for Financial Inclusion" (January 2013) CGAP and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) convened over 70 funders, practitioners, and researchers for a workshop on impact evaluation for financial inclusion in January 2013. Co-hosted by DFID in London, the workshop was an opportunity for participants to engage with leading researchers on the latest research methods of impact evaluation and to discuss other areas on the impact evaluation agenda.

1. Impact evaluation in mobile
finance
Implications for the Next Wave
of Financial Inclusion Models
Jake Kendall
Senior Program Officer, Research and Innovation
Financial Services for the Poor

2. Measurement along causal chain
Impact
Impact
evaluations
Uptake
& Usage
Causality
Reporting and
Measurement
Implementation
Monitoring and
Reporting
Intensity
© 2010 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |

3. New technologies – new models – new limits
Digital models are fundamentally different in a number of ways:
1. Free (to someone) transactions allows smaller size, higher
frequency, over greater distance
2. Inherently data rich– allows geo-spatial mapping,
transactional mining, social network analysis
3. Real-time communications interface – allows self-service
account information, reminders
4. Real-time control interface – even self-activation
What should we build with this? What is the vision for what
we want to achieve for clients?
© 2012 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

4. Airtime transfers during an earthquake
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© 2012 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

5. Few assessments of mobile finance impacts
§ G2P in Niger – Aker et al
§ Airtime transfers in Rwanda –
Blumenstock
§ RCT in Mozambique
§ Natural experiment in Kenya –
Jack and Suri
© 2012 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

6. Access to M-PESA generates significant welfare effects through
enabling informal financial relationships
Evidence from a 2,100 M-PESA facilitates increased
household panel survey in risk-sharing among networks
Kenya:1 of friends and family.
▪ M-PESA users are able to fully Following a major shock, M-
absorb large negative income PESA users are more likely
shocks (such as severe than non-users to:
illness, job loss, livestock ▪ Receive a remittance;
death, harvest or business WHY? ▪ Receive a larger amount of
failure) without any reduction transfers;
in household consumption. In
contrast, household
▪ Receive funds from a larger
network of senders; and
consumption falls on average
6-10 percent in response to a ▪ Receive funds from
major shock when households senders who are located
don’t have an M-PESA user2 further away
Source: 1) Suri and Jack (2011) Risk sharing and transaction costs, Working Paper
2) Using regression techniques, the researchers perform several tests to rule out © 2009 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |
alternative explanations (like higher income) which are correlated with M-PESA usage

7. In the pipeline
§ Chamgampka – mobile health savings
§ SME supply chain credit in Kenya
§ Angaza mobile activated solar energy
§ Dahabshiil sharia-compliant micro-saving,
credit and payment system in Somalia
§ Two in Afghanistan – savings and salary
payments
§ Telenor??
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© 2012 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

8. Impact evaluations of mobile are
inherently difficult for a few reasons
§ Inherent challenge of evaluating a network
technology:
• Scale modifies impact – “network affect”
• Sub-scale often implies sub-par (e.g. agent network)
§ Large scale commercial operators un-
cooperative
§ Mobile vs. Chanel vs. Product
§ Many uses and use cases means hard to know
where to look
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© 2012 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation