What Regulatory Frameworks are More Conducive to Mobile Banking? Empirical Evidence from Findex Data
Mobile banking services offer great potential to expand financial services, particularly payment services, to the poor. They also provide a convenient and cost effective way to access bank accounts. This paper constitutes a first attempt to explain statistically what factors contribute to mobile banking usage, with a particular focus on the regulatory framework. The authors construct an index that measures the existence of laws and regulation that support mobile banking activity for 35 countries. Using variations in regulatory environments across these countries and armed with newly released data on mobile banking usage by approximately 37,000 individuals in these 35 countries, the paper sheds light on the importance of laws and regulation in supporting mobile banking. The analysis finds that a supporting regulatory framework is associated with higher usage of mobile banking for the general population as well as for the unbanked.
Summary: | Mobile banking services offer great
potential to expand financial services, particularly payment
services, to the poor. They also provide a convenient and
cost effective way to access bank accounts. This paper
constitutes a first attempt to explain statistically what
factors contribute to mobile banking usage, with a
particular focus on the regulatory framework. The authors
construct an index that measures the existence of laws and
regulation that support mobile banking activity for 35
countries. Using variations in regulatory environments
across these countries and armed with newly released data on
mobile banking usage by approximately 37,000 individuals in
these 35 countries, the paper sheds light on the importance
of laws and regulation in supporting mobile banking. The
analysis finds that a supporting regulatory framework is
associated with higher usage of mobile banking for the
general population as well as for the unbanked. |
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