Refugee payments study, Uganda

• Oct 29, 2018
• 1 min

MSC has conducted secondary research on refugee initiatives in a number of countries. In Uganda, we supplemented this with primary research for Airtel Uganda and DanChurch Aid (DCA), which examined the role of super-agents and mobile money agents, as well as the opportunities and challenges of using mobile money to make payments to refugees in the country. MSC’s engagements obtained insights on how these organizations dealt with, among others, issues such as identity, SIM card ownership, digital payments, and liquidity management.

Given the growing focus around the world on refugees, MSC set-out to derive insights on refugee digital payments. We conducted secondary research on refugee initiatives in other countries, followed by research with two staff from Airtel Uganda. The Airtel research enabled us to assess Airtel’s level of support, to obtain insights on how the company works on Know Your Customer (KYC) issues and liquidity management related to refugee payments.

MSC conducted research with DanChurch Aid (DCA) to gather insights into their experience in supporting refugee payments. Our study of super-agents and money agents assessed their level of engagement, KYC requirements, and experience in supporting refugee payments. The MSC team conducted research with beneficiaries to understand their user experience. We conducted research with market vendors to understand their user-experience and the level and nature of support to refugee payments.

At the time of writing, Airtel Uganda was making a growing proportion of the payments to the 1.4 million-plus refugees in the camps in northern Uganda.