“The Paper Slip Should be There!”Perceptions of Transaction Receipts in Branchless

Banking

Saurabh Panjwani*, Mohona Ghosh#, Ponnurangam K#, Soumya Vardhan Singh#

*Bell Labs India #IIIT Delhi

• Extends banking services to low-income communities without installing physical branches

Branchless Banking

Branchless Banking

Customer

Traditional Banking

Teller

Customer

Bank Branch

(urban)

Mom ‘n pop shop

(peri-urban, rural)

Agent

(shopkeeper)

• Current reach: > 100M users (> 40M in India alone)

Courtesy: CKS

Our Partner – Eko

• Leading branchless banking company in India

– Business correspondent to State Bank of India (largest Indian bank) + 2 private banks

• Main service offering: money transfer (remittances)

– Target audience: unbanked urban migrant workers

– Transaction volume: $1 million per day

Courtesy: eko

Money Transfers in Eko

• SMS receipts are key part of the system (proves to customer that transaction has been recorded by Eko)

Agent

An SMS receipt

SMS receipts

(sent to both users)

“Transfer amount X to account Y”

Customer

Bank Server

Our Study

• A qualitative study to understand user perceptions of SMS receipts in branchless banking

• Two points of investigation

– Usability concerns: What factors affect usability of the SMS receipt technology?

– Security perceptions: How do customers view SMS receipts in relation to transaction security?

Method and User Sample

• We used a combination of semi-structured interviews and participant observations

– 87 real transactions observed in the field

• Sample:

– 67 users (15 agents, 52 customers) from New Delhi, India

– Customers were largely migrant workers living in slums, employed as laborers, cooks, drivers, micro-entrepreneurs

– Limited education (75% without college degree)

– Limited exposure to banking

• In sum, > 100 man-hours spent in the field

Key Findings

• Users viewed SMS receipts as important but worried about SMS delays and drops

– 16% of observed transactions experienced > 5-min delay

– SMS delays are a problem across systems e.g., M-Pesa [MM10]

• Agents started issuing paper receipts in response– “Even if the SMS is late, this serves as proof that you made the deposit”

– 70% of the agents we visited had adopted this practice

• Paper receipts became an instrument of convenience

– New agent strategy: Give receipt for cash now, do the transaction later

– This increases operational efficiency but introduces new risks: What if the agent doesn’t complete transaction?

– Eko discourages the strategy but it continues to persist

The Paper Receipt Phenomenon

• Customers report in support of paper receipts“The slip should be there! [If] the SMS does not come, it’d be of use”

– Other benefits: more tangible, more accessible. Some even find them more storable: “My phone can store only 20 [SMS receipts].”

• Paper receipts affect customer attention towards SMS

– In shops with paper receipts, only 38% customers make eye-contact with SMS (compared with 86% in the rest!)

• Still, most customers don’t want SMS to be eliminated

“I have more trust in SMS. Even if I get a paper receipt, it does not mean that the money has reached.”

The Paper Receipt Phenomenon

Conclusion

• Branchless banking users desire reliability and securityfor receipts

– Paper gives better reliability but SMS more secure

• Key design recommendations

– Increase reliability of existing SMS receipt technology• Ongoing work: pull-based SMS receipts [Panjwani13]

– Use a (careful) combination of SMS and paper

Thank you

References

[MM10] M-Money Channel Distribution Case - Kenya, 2010. http://www.microfinancegateway.org

[Panjwani-13] Panjwani, S. Practical Receipt Authentication for Branchless Banking. In ACM DEV 2013.

For any further information, please write topk@iiitd.ac.in

precog.iiitd.edu.in