hello my name is Karen San and I am
going to be presenting today the results
of our study on the role of user agent
interactions in Mobile money practices
in Kenya and Tanzania this was work that
was done in collaboration by researchers
from kegi melon
University so let's start with a quick
motivation for studying mobile money
Financial Services have traditionally
been offered by Banks which has left
many people
unbounded in Africa and other emerging
economies however mobile money is a
service which is a service provided by
Telos is transforming how millions of
people can access various Banking and
digital payment services mobile money is
therefore helping to close the financial
inclusion gaps for the unbanked many of
whom have been from
Africa mobile money which I will use the
term mofo has reimagined what it means
to be banked for example users do not
need to have a bank account instead it's
their phone number that acts as an
account the services also leverages on
the TCO infrastructure and relies on SMS
and ussd which makes it accessible to
feature phones which a large population
still
uses instead of Bank branches authorized
third parties who are known as agents
facilitate Last Mile access of mobile
money agents are typically small
businesses and shops within the
community who often provide mobile Money
Services in addition to their Core
Business for example selling
grocery agents earn a commission for
extending mobile Money Services to the
customers because of their accessibility
they therefore offer a much greater
reach that is at least 55 times that of
banks in 20122 for example agents in
Kenya digitized a value equating to a
third of Kenya's GDP in just 6
months so in essence we can think of
mobile money as two categories of
interactions the first is the user Momo
interaction which you can think of as a
adoption and the second is the user
agent
interaction to date the user Momo
interaction that is adoption has
received enormous attention and has been
well researched in the adoption
literature the user agent interaction
however has not been studied much and
especially not in the context of privacy
and security this is particularly
important because in addition to
digitizing money agents end up wearing
many other Hearts including onboarding
which entails registering new users
typically new users have to register
their SIM card using an identification
normally that would be a national ID
card agents also end up educating new
and old users on how to use Momo and
ensure compliance with identity proofing
requirements also known as know your
customer that is kyc and kyc simply
ensures that momu has a clear picture of
who their customer is kyc is also
essential in the fight against money
laundering and anti-terrorism
financing agents also provide customer
support whenever users run into any
problems so to understand the privacy
and Security in one
around user agent interaction we
conducted qualitative studies in Kenya
and Tanzania we chose these two
countries because East Africa has been a
Trailblazer for mobile money and so we
interviewed 36 mobile money users in
each country resulting in a total of 72
users let's now take one step back so we
can understand how mobile money Works
before we highlight the findings of the
study once registered a user can
complete one of three types of
transactions that is cashing in cashing
out and P2P or pass to
person let's start with the first one
which is cashing in also called
depositing this starts with the user
handing physical cash to the agent the
agent maintains a balance that is called
a float and if the agent has sufficient
float he will accept Alice's physical
cash in exchange of mobile money that he
will transfer to Alice's phone via
SMS similar to cashing in cashing out
which is withdrawing starts with Bob
transferring monies from his phone to
the agent's mobile money account and so
long as the agent has sufficient flow
he will accept the transfer and hand Bob
the physical cash equivalent of the
amount that he has
transferred in personto person
transactions agent mediation is
typically not required Alice can simply
initiate a transfer from her phone to
Bob's phone via SMS or
ussd and using Bob's phone number as a
receiving
account when transacting at the agents
that is cashing in and Cashing Out users
are required to show their ID in order
to comply with kyc regulations which is
know your
customer the agent checks the physical
ID to authenticate the customer by
comparing the details on the ID with
those returned from the Momo after they
have initiated a transaction
now that we have an understanding of how
Momo works I will now focus on a subset
of our findings by highlighting three
important results first we found that
users and agents design work arounds in
response to challenges within the Momo
ecosystem second whereas the choice of
an agent had a lot to do with
convenience we also observed that a key
motivating factor was the need to
mitigate any privacy and security risks
arising from this ecosystem and third we
found that workarounds in the long run
introduced more privacy and security
challenges in over
overall let's dive into the first
finding we observed that workarounds
were designed by users and agents in all
the phases of the
transaction for example in the
transaction execution phase the
workarounds entailed changing the
transaction execution process such by
such as by involving proxies and
modifying the role of the agent as well
as modification of the transaction
characteristics such as the size and the
location of the
transaction in the kyc phase agent and
users collaboratively worked together to
modify how kyc was completed as well as
changing what was given for kyc that is
in place of the user's physical
ID we also note that the workarounds
were motivated by challenges within the
Momo ecosystem that were not limited to
privacy and security but which in end
had serious privacy and security
implications that I will highlight later
in this
presentation in the transaction phase
for example some of the motivators
included navigating transaction costs
seeking more convenience Network
downtime insufficient fla security
concerns and data
privacy with regards to network downtime
for example k01 said
if there's a delay I will just have to
leave the money with my details and
phone number users often went ahead to
explain that they wrote down this
information on papers which they left
with the agent and also left the money
with the agent and trusted that they
would complete the transaction into
their account
later TZ 32 was among those who were
concerned about agents knowing their
transaction details and using this
information to perpetrate fraud I don't
feel good because one can't know the
agents intentions they know your
transaction details they can tell
someone else and then you end up being
robbed with regards to data privacy we
observed varied perceptions on the role
and impact of data sharing with agents
users like tz6 for example said they
Trust Ed agents to keep their
information safe while others like
k25 mentioned that agents sometimes used
people's IDs to register additional SIM
cards which they sold to other
individuals without an ID to register
their own SIM card to use for
M while M more users felt that kyc was
necess necessary for security many also
spoke of the challenges with using IDs
for identity
proofing with regards to kyc being
essential for security K ke20 and
k21 highlighted how providing an ID
ensured that one was not feigning their
identity and how this ensured the
security of momo overall
while many had similar sentiments most
participants also expressed
dissatisfaction for example the
potential denial of service if if one
forgot to carry their ID when they
needed to transact participants also
felt that checking each customer's ID
was really not practical since agents
facilitated many transactions in a day
as a result of the kyc challenges we
observed several workarounds related to
kyc which as I mentioned before can be
broadly categorized as changing how kyc
was provided and what was provided for
kyc K15 for example mentioned that they
used a cousin's ID since they had
registered their sim card with that ID
this is really akin to using someone
else's social security number and
account as your own many other
participants like K20 reported just
giving the agent the ID number instead
of the actual ID while some like
k31 mentioned that the agents they used
have memorized their ID numbers and so
they do not need to provide
that as a result of the in inherent and
created risks we therefore observed in
our second finding that how users chose
agents was driven by both convenience
and the desire to mitigate the privacy
and security risks within the Momo
ecosystem for example at the transaction
execution stage participants sometimes
modified the transaction size and the
location where they
transacted
k08 said they divide the transaction to
two maybe three times and do one
transaction at One agent and another at
a separate agent and they do so for
security
purposes TZ 33 also changed the location
of his transactions for security reasons
sending someone else as a proxy to
transact threed the kyc procedures of
authenticating the customer as a result
like
ke18 who said that the person he sent
had to be known by the agent Mumu users
tended to stick with agents who knew
their elected proxies at least to an
extent to facilitate proxy transactions
our third and final finding suffices new
privacy and security risks emerging from
the different workarounds that M users
adopted in general most of the
workarounds thwarted any privacy and
security measures that Mumu had put in
place and especially
kyc this left room for more vulnerable
abilities such as
repudiation for example T TZ 17 shared
how someone who's using another person's
SIM card may deny receiving money thus
making P2P transactions difficult to
authenticate another broad risk was
related to higher chances of fraud
because of the broken kyc
as explained further by
k17 the data Rich environment also made
Momo users more vulnerable to fraud
leading to a potential loss of their
money in general this work highlights
three important
takeaways first we have seen that
workarounds are often motivated by
efforts to limit risk and uncertainity
as well as to overcome challenges within
Momo second we have seen that user work
arounds are inconsistent with their
security preferences especially with
regards to kyc and this is likely
because of the but and some
processes and last we have seen how M
users have varied perceptions that
impact their data sharing with agents
following these insights our
recommendations are as
follows one there is a need to design
for privacy and security at the
interface between agents and users
especially given that agents continue to
play a very important role in the
financial inclusion of people who would
otherwise be
unbanked second since the importance of
kyc cannot be underestimated
there is a need to think about
registration and identity proofing
mechanisms for those who lack
identification finally we highlight the
need to improve the usability of momo to
address some of the motivations for user
workarounds with that I would like to
thank you for listening and I encourage
you to have a look at the paper if you
would like to learn more