Riding (the) Rocket to Digitised Microfinance
Field officers at SAJIDA, a microfinance institution (MFI) in Bangladesh, had heard multiple complaints from group members who struggle to attend borrowers’ meetings to repay their loans. Less than half the group attended meetings regularly, and many members were instead making their payments through another member who was able to attend. SAJIDA realized that group meetings no longer held the same importance to successful microcredit operations, especially in the urban and peri-urban areas where they operate.
As an alternative, in December 2017, SAJIDA started offering loan recipients at five branches the convenient ability to make repayments with mobile money at a neighbourhood agent instead of with cash in a group. SAJIDA partnered with Rocket, a digital financial services product from Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL). Rocket currently enables 27 million account holders in Bangladesh to send money to friends and family, make purchases, and pay bills.
Each month, SAJIDA receives loan repayments from almost 10,000 clients across five of their branches using mobile money. These repayments record roughly 25,000 transactions totalling BDT 50 million (around $600,000). But how has this service really affected the lives of its customers? This article explores the customer experience around the introduction of mobile money repayments and what this means for SAJIDA’s business going forward.
