The Journey to Product-Market Fit for Mobile Money Providers

Our research of the supply-side capabilities of mobile money services revealed that providers are adequately equipped to design, build and deliver mobile financial services sustainably. These capabilities include physical resources like finance, acquired resources like technology, distribution channels and locations, as well as human resources and strategic capability.

However, when we review mobile money adoption and use numbers, the adequacy of the supplier-capabilities leaves substantial gaps in the story. It is one thing for the suppliers to be technically capable of delivering mobile financial services, but it is another to create and market products that are appropriate and address the needs of the target consumers.

In our 2016 Digital Financial Services State of the Market Report, one major inhibitor to mobile money adoption cited was a lack of appropriate products. Mobile financial products, like all other products and services, must address customer needs, i.e. they either solve a problem or perform a task. Deep understanding of the problems or tasks facing consumers will aid marketing efforts by informing campaigns with accurate insights, build awareness and eventually lead to trial and use.

Take M-Pesa for example.

When the story of M-Pesa is told, it is usually incomplete without mentioning Safaricom’s first advertising campaign “Send money home” which was pivotal to the success of M-Pesa. Why? In large part, this was because members of many Kenyan families live and work in other cities like Nairobi, while the rest remain in the village. Hence, the need to repatriate money periodically using traditional methods (buses, couriers, etc.) were the norm. M-Pesa’s “send money home” campaign also coincided with the 2008 post-election violence that limited vehicular movement. The campaign positioned M-Pesa as a fast, safe and easy way to transfer money.

The rest is history!

By keying into a real cultural phenomenon and taking advantage of a political opportunity, the campaign, and by extension the product, achieved what entrepreneurs usually refer to as product-market fit.

Cultural context matters because culture eats strategy for lunch.

Now look at the Nigerian market. Are DFS products and services designed with the customer in mind or are providers releasing generic products and services with the hope that one or two will stick? Do providers have sufficient knowledge of the problems or the activities customers need to get done? Can the products being designed be understood by their target consumers?

Unless providers can key into real world problems situated within the diverse spectrums of Nigerian reality and the problems or jobs the consumers need addressed, mass mobile money adoption will remain elusive.

Another important aspect of the product-market fit struggle is that while designing products for the market, a lot of consideration ought to go into the delivery of those products. In particular, the interface the consumers will use to access and interact with these products would benefit from accurate consumer insights as well.

The digital revolution has ushered us into an era of intuitive digital products. Today, with advances in technology enabling intuitive, creative and experimental UX and UI, coupled with all the work being done around Human Centred Design, even kids can use and interact with digital products with ease. The trick is to dumb down the interface for the customer, ensuring that the experience matches the customer’s expectation.

Our research profiles of the under-banked and unbanked have identified that these groups are predominantly women and youths between the ages of 18 and 35 with minimal education. Hence, if an illiterate 18-month old child can get around an iPhone or iPad, then making interfaces and user experiences that would match the expectations of 18–35 year olds is not a herculean task.

This argument kills the literacy excuse. So the real question is what type of interfaces can these customer segments understand? What types of financial activities are they trying to conduct that could be addressed through mobile solutions?

These are some of the questions that must be asked and answered if we are trying to reach excluded populations. Not only should the products and services meet their specific and real problems but the design, user interface and experience must also be inclusive. A good rule of thumb is, if a user needs to read the manual before using a product, then the design is difficult! The general consensus is that basic features should be intuitive enough to use.

The lesson is simple. Aim for the bottom when designing your product UI.

Obviously, the road to market-fit is paved with true collaboration among providers because providers need to learn from each other about what works and what doesn’t. As Oo Nwonye once wrote succinctly, “our mobile money operators should understand that they are not competing with each other but with adoption.”

We’ll wrap up this article with a comment made at our Financial Inclusion Conference last year — “Everything we are trying to do revolves around the customer. Once we place the consumer at the center of all our conversations, everything changes and we gain the right perspective.”