Open AccessMobile Money and the Impact of Mobile Phone Regulatory Enforcement Among the Urban Poor in Tanzania
Author(s) -
Laura Stark
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
human technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 7
ISSN - 1795-6889
DOI - 10.17011/ht/urn.202106223977
Subject(s) - mobile payment , financial inclusion , business , mobile phone , tanzania , subsistence agriculture , enforcement , intermediary , capital (architecture) , mobile technology , finance , financial services , economics , geography , mobile computing , telecommunications , political science , socioeconomics , engineering , agriculture , law , payment , archaeology
Mobile money provides a tool for survival, particularly in urban conditions shaped by city regulations that make microvending difficult for the poor. An analysis of 165 interviews conducted in two low-income neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over 8 years demonstrates how interlocked layers of technology and interaction make mobile money services semiformal. I introduce two mobile money-enabled survival strategies: intrahousehold transfers for day-to-day survival (transfers within the same city) and resource safeguarding through kin remittances of start-up capital (home-based subsistence business capital stored for kin access in emergencies). The recent tightening of mobile phone regulations in the global South has disrupted users’ multilevel and formal/informal-hybrid infrastructures of money movement in these communities. Such tougher regulations could result in a new digital divide that hinders rather than facilitates the financial inclusion of the poor.