Motivation
Costs are a leading driver of take-up and usage of digital financial services (DFS), yet little work has been done to measure these costs systematically. The Transaction Cost Index (TCI) seeks to fill this gap by systematically measuring the costs of using mobile money. We consider a broad definition of cost, inclusive of official fees and taxes, informal extra fees charged by agents, and non-pecuniary costs such as the opportunity cost of time wasted on failed transactions and exposure to consumer protection risks.
Mobile Money Prices Dashboard
The Mobile Money Prices dashboard visualizes data on mobile money fees across 32 providers in 16 low- and middle-income countries. Fees can be compared across different countries, providers, transaction types, and data collection periods. The underlying data can be found on Harvard Dataverse.