Enhance financial activity among women entrepreneurs through mobile saving

Offer women micro-entrepreneurs help with opening an interest-bearing mobile-based savings account. A mobile based savings account can reduce the hassle of traveling long distances and the interest component helps entice women to move towards formal banking.

Behavioral Tools:  Hassle Simplification, Incentive

Benchmarked Intervention

Experiment Overview

An experiment was conducted in Tanzania targeting 4000 women micro-entrepreneurs. Women were randomly allocated to one of three groups: (1) A treatment group that was invited to receive a mobile banking training session (MBT), and then assisted to open an interest bearing mobile savings account. The women entrepreneurs were also offered the option to set personal savings goals and to receive weekly SMS reminders to save. (2) A treatment group that was invited to both mobile banking training session, and business training sessions (MBT + Business) designed to improve the women’s business and financial literacy skills. (3) A control group that did not receive either training.

Impact

Source: Bastian, G., Bianchi, I., Buvinic, M., Goldstein, M., Jaluka, T., Knowles, J., Montalvao, J., & Witoelar, F. (2018). Are Mobile Savings the Silver Bullet to Help Women Grow Their Businesses?