DFS are used often

DFS are being used often by the respondents: 91.3% reports to use DFS 'Very Often', 'Often', or 'Sometimes'.

For the people in the treatment group this calculation comes in even higher, at 94.6%.

The total of the 'Very Often', 'Often', or 'Sometimes' answers has gone up from 80% for interview 2, to 85% for interview 3, to 91% for this interview 4. A very noticable change!

The total only differs a little bit for men (90.2%) and women (92.6%), but when we look closer, we see interesting differences: women are much more likely to say they use DFS 'sometimes', and men are more likely to respond that they use DFS 'Often' and 'Very Often'.

M-Pesa, Okoa Jahazi and M-Shwari are king

Despite the perceived dominance of M-pesa, the digital financial service Okoa Jahazi is getting almost as many mentions when the respondents were asked which DFS they have been using.

DFS Balances

When we look at the balance of what respondents have borrowed and saved in their DFS accounts (not including airtime), we see interesting differences between the groups and gender.

Weirdly enough, the control group has a much larger average amount saved in their DFS account (1822 vs 1068 Kenyan Shilling). In the last interview this was 471 Kenyan Shilling for the control group vs 1250 for the Treatment group, so it looks like this is a volatile metric (which makes sense if the respondents are indeed using DFS often).

Furthermore, females have much more in the digital bank than males: 1593 vs 601 Kenyan Shilling).

Learnings, Challenges and Wishes

What did you learn and what gave you trouble?

Almost 60% didn't learn anything new about DFS. Seeing that the respondents use DFS very often (and more so from interview to interview), the people who answered 'Nothing' could very well just be proficient enough in the usage of DFS to not need to learn anything more.

Other answers include that respondents learned how to save, or that saving is good, and that more saving increases the chances of getting a loan.

When asked what trouble the respondents had, a whopping 76% said they had no trouble since the last visit. This is a huge increase of 20% from the last visit.

Interestingly enough, these distributions don't differ that much by group (they did a bit with previous interviews). They do differ by gender, but only 2.4% to 5.4%.

What would you like to learn about DFS?

Despite the fact that respondents seem to be using DFS often and don't experience a lot of trouble, there is always something to learn. The majority has very specific questions, which often focus on a specific goal with a specific digital financial service provider.

However, we also saw a few general answers, like 'What to gain from using DFS', and 'How mobile money transfer was invented and by who?'. See a selection of answers on the right.

There is a small difference between the groups: a bit more people in the control group say they have nothing to learn, and more people in the treatment group want to lean about Mpesa / Mshwari in particular.