Digital financial services have catalyzed financial inclusion in Africa. Commonly implemented as a mobile wallet service referred to as mobile money (MoMo), the technology provides enormous benefits to its users, some of whom have long been unbanked. While the benefits of mobile money services have largely been documented, the challenges that arise -- especially in the interactions between human stakeholders -- remain relatively unexplored. In this study, we investigate the practices of mobile money users in their interactions with mobile money agents. We conduct 72 structured interviews in Kenya and Tanzania (n=36 per country). The results show that users and agents design workarounds in response to limitations and challenges that users face within the ecosystem. These include advances or loans from agents, relying on the user-agent relationships in place of legal identification requirements, and altering the intended transaction execution to improve convenience. Overall, the workarounds modify one or more of what we see as the core components of mobile money: the user, the agent, and the transaction itself. The workarounds pose new risks and challenges for users and the overall ecosystem. The results suggest a need for rethinking privacy and security of various components of the ecosystem, as well as policy and regulatory controls to safeguard interactions while ensuring the usability of mobile money.

翻译：数字金融服务推动了非洲的金融包容性。该技术通常以移动钱包服务的形式实施，即移动货币，为其用户——其中许多人长期未获得银行服务——提供了巨大益处。尽管移动货币服务的好处已被广泛记录，但出现的问题——尤其是在人类利益相关者之间的互动——仍相对未被探索。在本研究中，我们调查了移动货币用户在与移动货币代理交互中的实践。我们在肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚进行了72次结构化访谈（每个国家n=36）。结果表明，用户和代理针对用户在生态系统内面临的限制和挑战设计了变通方法。这些包括代理提供的预付款或贷款、利用用户-代理关系替代法律身份认证要求，以及改变预期交易执行以提升便利性。总体而言，这些变通方法修改了我们认为是移动货币核心组件的至少一个：用户、代理以及交易本身。这些变通方法给用户和整个生态系统带来了新的风险和挑战。研究结果表明，需要重新思考生态系统各组件的隐私和安全性，以及制定政策和监管控制措施以保障交互，同时确保移动货币的可用性。