Mobile Money and Mobile Technologies: A Structural Estimation

Abstract

Mobile money is a service bundled with mobile technology and a social good that promotes financial inclusion for the under-served populations. Although the effect of mobile money has been examined in the past, we look at the supply side effects as it is important for managers to understand the role of mobile money in both providing social good and making a profit. From 1G to 4G mobile technologies, mobile money consistently serves as a competitive advantage for mobile network operators (MNOs). However, this does not mean that the effect stays unchanged over the generations of mobile technology. Instead, when the 3G technology allows web browsing as a major upgrade of mobile functionality, MNOs with mobile money have a substantially larger set of options to differentiate from those without mobile money; and as a result, mobile money implemented with 3G and 4G leads to larger market shares than that with 1G and 2G.