MFS Design in Appstore-enabled Smart Featurephones for Low-literate, Marginalized Communities

Mobile Financial Services (MFS) has gained significant popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among marginalized and low-income, low-literate communities around the world. Such communities have not been traditionally considered while designing MFS services via smartphone apps or USSD services in featurephones. Financial constraints limit such end-users towards basic featurephones, where recent appstore support has made it possible to deploy app-based MFS solutions beyond USSD. This new featurephone platform is a relatively underexplored area in terms of addressing design issues related to aforementioned end-users while developing MFS solutions. Our work addresses this gap by presenting qualitative findings on barriers to technology access focused on MFS solutions in marginal communities. We present a prototype non-USSD, app-based solution on an appstore-supported featurephone platform designed via a human-centered approach. This work has the potential to increase the financial inclusivity of marginalized communities in cashless MFS transactions via low-cost, appstore-enabled featurephones.