- Age
- 31 Years
- Location
- Nakuru
- Marital Status
- Married
- Education
- No Education
- Pathways Segment
An urban woman relying on others to manage mobile payments due to limited literacy
When digital payment systems assume that users can read, verify, and act independently, women who cannot do so are left exposed to loss and exclusion even when they technically ‘have access’. Partial use without safeguards can make livelihoods more fragile.
How She Uses the Phone
Having dropped out of primary school and being unable to read and write, the mobile phone has been a struggle for Zahara. She didn’t have any exposure to digital as a child and as an adolescent and the first time she ever used a phone was when her husband bought a second-hand basic phone for her younger co-wife.
Zahara contributes to the household income by doing odd laundry and cleaning jobs.
Her clients had been demanding that she receive payments via M-Pesa, “Who carries cash anymore?”, one of her clients had once asked her in frustration.
Once the phone was bought and the M-Pesa account set up on the SIM, Zahara began sharing her number and to receive M-Pesa payments. Since she couldn’t read or write, Zahara never carried the phone with her, leaving her no way of confirming if her clients made the payment. She would return home and ask her husband or co-wife to confirm for her. Over a few months, she suffered a number of losses with clients lying about having transferred her payment and others reversing the payment after making it. Zahara now only takes up work which pays in cash, which is becoming harder to find.
Her Ecosystem of Learning and Facilitation
For the first few weeks after her husband brought the phone to the house, Zahara showed little to no interest in it. Eventually her co-wife told her that she could share the phone and most importantly take up jobs that only pay via M-Pesa. Zahara’s husband decided that there was no point in her learning about how M-Pesa works, since she could not read and write. Instead, the number was written down on a piece of paper, which was handed to her. She was instructed to share this number with anyone who wants to pay with M-Pesa.
Her co-wife taught her how to answer calls, “See this green button? When the phone rings you press the button to answer the call and talk. Once you are done talking you can press this red button to end the call. That’s all you need to know.”
Zahara has always been underconfident and uncomfortable with the phone. She doesn’t answer the phone if her husband, co-wife or older children are in the house. Only if she is alone in the household and the phone rings, does she answer the call. She has slowly become familiar with some numbers. For e.g. she recognizes her oldest son’s number by the last 4 digits. When she wants to call her children or relatives she requests her co-wife or husband to make the call for her.
Once Zahara’s oldest son, who was visiting, offered to show her how to make calls herself, “what if there is an emergency and you are alone? What will you do?”. Zahara refused, saying, “It’s ok. I will ask the neighbor to make the call for me. How can someone like me with no education learn how to operate it? I am happy with what I already know.”
