Mobile Money and Financial Inclusion: A case study on Myanmar

Abstract: Worldwide, 1.7 billion individuals lack access to formal financial services. Yet, one billion of the financially excluded individuals have a mobile phone. Mobile money services take great benefit of this and are found a success in enabling financial inclusion on the African continent. However, there is no research on whether mobile money services have penetrated financially excluded individuals in regions outside of Africa. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of mobile money on financial inclusion in Myanmar. Furthermore, this study aims to identify the factors that influence the potential of mobile money. This study employs a binary logistic regression as the methodological approach, using data from the Global Financial Inclusion and the FinScope Myanmar Consumer Survey databases. The results show that mobile money significantly increases the likelihood of receiving remittances, whereas it finds no statistically significant effect on the likelihood to save. Notably, the results reveal the adoption of mobile money by both banked and unbanked individuals. In spite of, the results show an overall low adoption rate of mobile money services and suggest education, income, distance to the closest mobile money agent, and age as the largest obstacles to adopting and using.