Send behaviorally informed messages to encourage online banking

Send behaviorally informed text messages to encourage customers to check their account balances online in order to track their savings. Messages can include recommended savings levels that customers should have in their account or can highlight the widespread use of using online banking platforms by customers’ peer groups.

Behavioral Tools: Reminders, Social Norms

Benchmarked Intervention

Experiment Overview

Ideas42 and Busara Center for Behavioral Economics worked with a major bank and telecommunications company in Nigeria to send behaviorally-informed SMS messages to customers (N=75,000) to increase their use of mobile bank accounts. The intervention was designed to encourage particularly women who access and use banking products at a lower rate than men in Nigeria. One set of messages utilized “injunctive norms”( i.e., what one ought to do) and provided recommended savings levels that customers should have in their account. The other set of messages used “descriptive norms” (i.e., what others are doing) highlighted the widespread usage of the product by customers’ peer groups. In addition to these two treatment groups, a pure control group received no messages.