Revisiting the Impact of Mobile Banking in Financial Inclusion Among the Developing Countries

Abstract

Financial inclusion ensures financial products and services at reasonable rates for individuals and aims to introduce unbanked people into banking and financial services. The study aims to explore the effect that mobile banking facilities have on financial inclusion in 17 developing countries. From 2011 to 2017, this study took data from the three dimensions of financial inclusion called "Penetration," "Access," and "Uses". This paper took the Sarma model of Index of Financial Inclusion (IFI) to measure financial inclusion. This paper incorporates mobile money accounts as a "penetration" variable and Mobile banking outlet as an "Access" variable with existing model variables to quantify the effect of mobile banking. This research finds that mobile banking positively impacts the selected countries, though the degree of the changes is not symmetric. African regional countries have improved their financial inclusion after introducing mobile banking much better compared to other regions. This study is limited to examining mobile banking effects on selected emerging countries only. Future research may be devoted to developing more innovative strategies and tools to reach out to unbanked people, including people who face disparities in mobile phone ownership and bandwidth allocation.