Savings as forward Payments: Innovations on Mobile Money Platforms

This paper by Ignacio Mas presents a new framework which allows people to manage their diverse payment, cashflow management and commitment savings needs simply and intuitively, from a single account. It builds on the logic of mobile money platforms, which provide customers with the ability to initiate real-time electronic payments from their mobile phone and to keep funds in a store-of-value account. By introducing the notion of forward (or deferred) payments, it is possible to create a much richer set of uses for the basic transactional account which cater to people’s need for commitments and ear-marking of funds for specific goals. It is functionally equivalent to a system where the customer can create multiple sub-accounts, but it is much easier to conceive and manage by the customer since it does not entail multiple account opening or multiple account numbers