Digital platforms for financial inclusion

• Grant number: 16/07261-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): August 29, 2016
• Effective date (End): January 28, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Business Administration
• Principal Investigator: Eduardo Henrique Diniz
• Grantee: Eduardo Henrique Diniz
• Host Investigator: Hendricus Wilhelmus Gerardus Maria van Heck
• Host Institution: Escola de Administração de Empresas (EAESP). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Netherlands

Abstract

With the current ubiquity of mobile telephony, digital payment platforms hold a potential of changing the landscape of monetary transactions. Access to mobile devices is largely wide spread in contrast with the much more limited access to traditional financial services, such as bank accounts and savings. For this reason, mobile payment is considered a key instrument for improving financial inclusion, and it opens opportunities for lowering costs of services offering to the financially underserved in the society (Alampay e Bala 2010; Duncomb e Boateng, 2009). Mobile payment systems are, by their own nature, based on the establishment of a network of companies having different approaches to the market and under regulation originated in specific areas, such as the financial and the telecommunication sectors. For that reason, mobile payment systems environments are commonly treated as "ecosystems", in which firms from various industries have to "negotiate the exchange of their complementary resources and capabilities in order to provide a mobile payment platform" (Gaur and Ondrus, 2012:171). At the same time, the emergence of software-based platforms is shifting competition toward platform-centric ecosystems (Tiwana et al. 2010). Understanding payment systems from the point of view of the plataform-centric ecosystems is a recent phenomenon that has not received enough attention in information systems (IS) research yet. In particular when considering the focus of payment systems directed to promote financial inclusion, studies of payment systems as platforms are even more scarce due the complexity of understanding the influence of information and communication technology (ICT) in social life, no matter what lens is adopted to study it (Pozzebon et al. 2009). And, to make it more difficult, many of these theories do not address the problems that arise from designing digital platforms that support online social interactions (Spagnoletti et al, 2015). The analysis of mobile payment platforms for financial inclusion demands understanding of issues such as design, governance, and environmental dynamics as well as the community and societal issues related to social and human aspects. Thus, a framework that combines adequately technical and societal aspects will be helpful to understand the evolutionary process of payment platforms for financial inclusion in terms of its implementation, adoption, and use is needed. This way, the main objective of this project is to develop and propose ways for testing a framework for analysis of payment platforms for financial inclusion. The main focus of this framework would be on mobile payment systems, since this particular case of payment platform is expected to better fit in the financial inclusion case. Other types of payment platforms can evolve from this framework in the future. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

DINIZ, EDUARDO H.; SIQUEIRA, ERICA S.; VAN HECK, ERIC. Taxonomy of digital community currency platforms{*}. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR DEVELOPMENT, v. 25, n. 1, SI, p. 69-91, JAN 2 2019. (16/07261-2)