Understanding Interface Design and Mobile Money Perceptions in Latin America

Mobile money can facilitate financial inclusion in developing countries, which usually have high mobile phone use and steady remittance activity. Many countries in Latin America meet the minimum technological requirements to use mobile money, however, the adoption in this region is relatively low. This paper investigates the different factors that lead people in Latin America to distrust and therefore not adopt mobile money. For this purpose, we analyzed 27 mobile money applications on the market and investigated the perceptions that people in Latin America have of such interfaces. From our study, we singled out the interface features that have the greatest influence in user adoption in developing countries. We identified that for the Latin America market it is crucial to create mobile applications that allow the user to visualize and understand the workflow through which their money is traveling to recipients. We examined the significance of these findings in the design of future mobile money applications that can effectively improve the use of electronic financial transactions in Latin America.