Languages
Pages
Legal
“The Paper Slip Should be There!”Perceptions of Transaction Receipts in Branchless
Banking
Saurabh Panjwani*, Mohona Ghosh#, Ponnurangam K#, Soumya Vardhan Singh#
*Bell Labs India #IIIT Delhi
• Extends banking services to low-income communities without installing physical branches
Branchless Banking
Branchless Banking
Customer
Traditional Banking
Teller
Customer
Bank Branch
(urban)
Mom ‘n pop shop
(peri-urban, rural)
Agent
(shopkeeper)
• Current reach: > 100M users (> 40M in India alone)
Courtesy: CKS
Our Partner – Eko
• Leading branchless banking company in India
– Business correspondent to State Bank of India (largest Indian bank) + 2 private banks
• Main service offering: money transfer (remittances)
– Target audience: unbanked urban migrant workers
– Transaction volume: $1 million per day
Courtesy: eko
Money Transfers in Eko
• SMS receipts are key part of the system (proves to customer that transaction has been recorded by Eko)
Agent
An SMS receipt
SMS receipts
(sent to both users)
“Transfer amount X to account Y”
Customer
Bank Server
Our Study
• A qualitative study to understand user perceptions of SMS receipts in branchless banking
• Two points of investigation
– Usability concerns: What factors affect usability of the SMS receipt technology?
– Security perceptions: How do customers view SMS receipts in relation to transaction security?
Method and User Sample
• We used a combination of semi-structured interviews and participant observations
– 87 real transactions observed in the field
• Sample:
– 67 users (15 agents, 52 customers) from New Delhi, India
– Customers were largely migrant workers living in slums, employed as laborers, cooks, drivers, micro-entrepreneurs
– Limited education (75% without college degree)
– Limited exposure to banking
• In sum, > 100 man-hours spent in the field
Key Findings
• Users viewed SMS receipts as important but worried about SMS delays and drops
– 16% of observed transactions experienced > 5-min delay
– SMS delays are a problem across systems e.g., M-Pesa [MM10]
• Agents started issuing paper receipts in response– “Even if the SMS is late, this serves as proof that you made the deposit”
– 70% of the agents we visited had adopted this practice
• Paper receipts became an instrument of convenience
– New agent strategy: Give receipt for cash now, do the transaction later
– This increases operational efficiency but introduces new risks: What if the agent doesn’t complete transaction?
– Eko discourages the strategy but it continues to persist
The Paper Receipt Phenomenon
• Customers report in support of paper receipts“The slip should be there! [If] the SMS does not come, it’d be of use”
– Other benefits: more tangible, more accessible. Some even find them more storable: “My phone can store only 20 [SMS receipts].”
• Paper receipts affect customer attention towards SMS
– In shops with paper receipts, only 38% customers make eye-contact with SMS (compared with 86% in the rest!)
• Still, most customers don’t want SMS to be eliminated
“I have more trust in SMS. Even if I get a paper receipt, it does not mean that the money has reached.”
The Paper Receipt Phenomenon
Conclusion
• Branchless banking users desire reliability and securityfor receipts
– Paper gives better reliability but SMS more secure
• Key design recommendations
– Increase reliability of existing SMS receipt technology• Ongoing work: pull-based SMS receipts [Panjwani13]
– Use a (careful) combination of SMS and paper
Thank you
References
[MM10] M-Money Channel Distribution Case - Kenya, 2010. http://www.microfinancegateway.org
[Panjwani-13] Panjwani, S. Practical Receipt Authentication for Branchless Banking. In ACM DEV 2013.
Top Related