We don’t know half as much as we’d like to about how poor people use and perceive branchless banking. But more data is giving us progressively better insights. A survey in Kenya, funded by FSD Kenya, provides a window onto M-PESA. The survey was done with 3,000 randomly selected households (with a bias towards locations with more M-PESA agents, so its not nationally representative and probably undercounts what’s happening in more remote, poorer areas of the country).

The highlights confirm some of what we already thought was happening, but also points at several surprises.

While M-PESA is wildly popular (85% of users say they are “happy”, “very happy” or “extremely happy” with the service), 85% use it once a month or even less frequently. In other words, they love it, but use it mostly for money transfer, a transaction most Kenyans only need to do infrequently. This suggests M-PESA still has a long way to go to penetrate other parts of Kenyan’s financial lives.

However, that seems to be happening already with a larger-than-expected cohort. Far more Kenyans are storing money in their M-PESA wallet than we thought. 21% said they use it to store money, typically for emergencies or short term needs.

Another interesting finding: 20% of users report having encountered problems withdrawing money from an M-PESA agent, usually because the agent does not have cash on hand. This is fascinating: could a bank survive if 1 in 5 of its customers couldn’t get their money when they wanted? Undoubtedly not.

But the super high satisfaction levels with M-PESA suggest consumers are more willing to put up with a degree of faults and limits with M-PESA, likely because customers have different (i.e. lower) expectations for a money transfer service than a bank. Perhaps M-PESA is such an improvement on the alternatives that the net gain in usability, security and affordability makes the occasional inconvenience with agents worth bearing.

The data also indicates customers typically put up with problems — only 1 in 4 who said they had a problem have attempted to report it to Safaricom. 93% of users say they don’t know how to complain to Safaricom. More than likely, they’re asking agents for help. In other words, agents are not only the #1 source of complaints (can’t get my cash) but also the place customers turn to for help.

-Mark Pickens