Overview

With support from Citi Foundation, Grameen Foundation executed an innovative partnership between Sonata, an MFI, and Oxigen, a payments company, to route MFI repayments through mobile money. This repayment acted as an introductory transaction for clients to develop their mobile financial capability as well as to start using mobile money to access digital financial services. The project was designed to let Sonata reduce the cash management burden and focus on its core strength as a trusted intermediary to develop the financial capability of the clients and on delivering financial services to the low income segments, while Oxigen focused on providing a digital transaction channel to the low income segments. Grameen Foundation enabled selection of the appropriate payments partner, negotiating the terms of partnership, piloting the model, training staff and clients and mapping data and financial flows between the two partners. In the second phase, our endeavour was to continue to roll out relevant Digital financial services to Sonata clients, while also focusing on designing and developing an e-learning solution for FLWs (Field Level Workers) to ensure that they are adequately trained and equipped to increase financial capabilities of end beneficiaries, especially women. G- LEAP an innovative e-learning app was developed through the project for anytime anywhere FLW learning and job-aid. The 18 month project aimed to reach and serve at least 27,000 people who would be trained by 400 FLWs to uptake digital channel for financial services. The project was successfully concluded in October 2017 with partners Sonata and Oxigen signing agreement to continue with the digital transactions through Micro ATMs for the clients and expand to new branches.

Impact Highlights

• 501 FLWs were trained through the project using G-LEAP
• 58, 646 clients were trained on Digital Financial Services by the FLWs
• 15, 760 clients demonstrated knowledge of DFS
• 15, 750 clients used DFS for their financial stability
• 4, 088 clients did at least 3 transactions using DFS
• Transactions worth 6.1 crore have happened through Sonata branches as of October 31st 2017

Role of GFI

Client Research for knowing their adoption pattern of financial services

– Conducted extensive field research to understand the roles, capabilities and influence of each member in the client’s ecosystem and assess how they could be leveraged to transition the client into using the mobile phone for transactions.
– Leveraged learnings from research to create the financial education module and training materials for clients
– Synthesized research findings to understand implications for KPIs and incentives for loan officers to drive adoption

Business Process Mapping

Conducted business process mapping exercise with microfinance institution and Mobile Money Provider, comprising cash flows, data flows, and operational processes, including location mapping of agents and centers

Created & implemented the training on G-LEAP

Related Information

Videos

In 2014, Grameen Foundation, in collaboration with Propellerfish, researched the hurdles the could prevent women from adopting and using digital financial services. This video showcases what we learned. We incorporated many of these learnings in our project design.

Grameen Foundation and India-based Sonata Finance were finalists for the Wall Street Journal Financial Inclusion Challenge 2016, for which WSJ produced this video to showcase the service we developed and the impact of borrowers and Sonata staff
Scaling Digital Financial Services & Financial Education

Blogs

The journey from cash to seamless mobile money transition and insights from the rural communities can be ready here. To know more about the steady and sustainable change behavior of the beneficiaries and to learn more about the challenges and learnings, click here

Stories Of Change