Women in rural Uganda are relying on mobile money agents to make transactions for them, highlighting a lack of mobile and numerical literacy, according to Lisa Kienzle, mobile financial services programme director at the Grameen Foundation.
Kienzle was speaking on the second day of the 2014 Mobile Money and Digital Payments conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“For women who actually do make it in person to make some sort of transaction there are a couple of other variables they face, mainly to do with literacy,” she said.
She said many women had trouble with numeracy and mobile literacy.
“If you’re a family in that part of the world and you’re running low on money, the boys will continue to go to school and girls stay at home,” Kienzle said.
“So if women have a limited ability to read, it means they have a limited ability to interact with mobile money.”
She said a lot of women do not understand SMSs advising them they have received remittances, adding they need someone to call and tell them about, while some women go as far as asking the mobile money agent to remember their PINs for future transactions.
“More often than we like to see, the agent knew the women’s PIN, whether it was 12345, or in many cases the women said ‘I want you to manage my PIN’,” Kienzle said.
She said numerous mobile money agents reported children transacting on behalf of their mothers, as they could not get away from the house.
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