Moving Beyond Access To Design: The Relevance of the Level One Principles for the Gender DFS Gap

Abstract

The rise in digital financial services (DFS), including the use of mobile money, has placed a sharper focus on women as an underserved and untapped customer segment from both the international development and fintech product perspectives. Basing our discussion on the Level One Principles, we argue that we need to pay greater attention to the design of DFS features and the impact they have on women, in addition to other factors such as infrastructure and literacy. We analyze findings from qualitative research in Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya conducted in 2019 which illustrate the importance of design in DFS. Although design is intertwined with several other factors, we argue that certain features (e.g. confirmation messages in real time at the end of a transaction) impact women more than men. Female DFS customers may therefore need particular support in terms of trusting and becoming comfortable with design features.