Why Do People Adopt and Use Mobile Money?

One thought that came from the Future of Cash conference was the need to understand digital payments more. A recent conference paper from Vietnam does just that as it examines why people in the developing world move to digital payments by studying the uptake of mobile money services in Vietnam ¹.

The paper starts by arguing that digitisation generally helps offset some of the negative effects of globalisation, for example increasing education through e-learning, providing access to health care through web access, increasing commerce through e-commerce and the ability of fintech apps to increase social capital and social equality.

In Vietnam the use of bank accounts, based on the World Bank’s Findex survey, increased between 2011 and 2014 from 21% to 31% but stalled at that level in the 2017 survey (although the latest survey shows 56% having accounts). At the time 80% of Chinese adults had bank accounts and the Asia Pacific average was 70%.