A model for electronic money transfer for low resourced environments: M-Cash

Abstract

Research shows that the majority of the population in developing countries lack basic financial services, which reduces opportunities of capital and wealth accumulation. As more service opportunities become available online, there is a growing need to develop technology platforms that can enable the world's poor participate in the global e-economy. Thus, in this paper, we review some of the prominent electronic money transfer systems and propose M-Cash, a mobile money transfer service ideal for low-resourced environments. M-Cash is developed in Hietml and Postgres SQL. The interface with the GSM network is provided by Kannel SMSC gateway. We simulated the various transactions of the system using dummy clients. The system is built on the concept of making the service available even to people who cannot afford to own a cellular phone. We discuss the operation ecosystem of M-Cash and conclude with a discussion of the future research direction.