Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money (SIMM) Project
The lack of access to financial services in the rural Philippines presents a major barrier to achieving broad-based economic growth. Mobile money offers an innovative, cost-effective means to create high-impact development that benefits marginalized populations. SIMM builds upon the U.S. Agency for International Development’s current interventions in microenterprise access and mobile banking to expand financial services through new technologies. Financial services provide the means for the poor and unbanked to build assets, better withstand shocks, and participate more broadly in the formal economy. Mobile phone banking has the potential to help the Philippines reach development goals faster and make those gains sustainable. With just 26 percent of Filipinos enjoying access to formal financial channels, a latent demand remains largely untapped as 610 out of 1,635 municipalities do not have banks. This two-year project will address supply and demand constraints to broaden adoption of mobile money in the Philippines while promoting global knowledge sharing.
Sample Activities
- Grow m-money to more than 1 million active users, one-quarter of whom are new subscribers to m-money services
- Train more than 10,000 people through financial education and literacy on the uses of m-money and m-money services for improved household financial management.
- Provide 10,000 people new savings accounts via m-banking.
- Establish an additional 2,500 cash-in/cash-out merchant partners operating mostly in rural areas.
- Increase payroll implementation and adoption to 100 small, medium, and large businesses and one GPH agency or local government unit.
- Increase the volume (monetary value) of m-money transactions by over 200 percent.
- Sponsor conferences and venues for networking support and produce research papers and assessments for knowledge sharing.
Contract: 2012–2014
Client: U.S. Agency for International Development
