In Senegal, more and more taxi drivers are offering mobile payment, “mobile money”. A large-scale study by MIT in partnership with Wave looked at the effects of this financial revolution for taxi drivers and owners.
From our correspondent in Dakar,
It’s the new must-have accessory in the yellow taxis of Dakar: a QR code to scan, hanging from the rear view mirror of the car. Many of the city’s 20,000 taxis now offer mobile payment with the main apps, Wave and Orange Money. Mouhamadou Bamba Ndiaye has been a driver since 2007. For him, mobile payment facilitates transactions with his customers. ” You give him your phone, he scans and it’s over, he leaves. But if you don’t have change, you go downstairs and look for change, it takes a lot of time. To save time, we use Wave or Orange Money ».
For nine months, Deivy Houeix, an economics researcher at MIT, conducted an impact study on digital payments through the Wave Business application with more than 2,000 taxi drivers and owners. He first quantified the effects of currency problems. ” It has been estimated that drivers lose on average around 5% of their daily profits due to currency problems. So it may as well be having the cash stolen, but it’s also going to get small change, having to lower prices because of the change, losing customers because of the change ».
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Profitability
At the end of the nine-month experiment, taxi drivers in the capital increased their profit, especially the poorest. Another development in the sector is traceability. About two-thirds of taxi owners share or lend their vehicle to another driver for a fee. Using the app has allowed some to share their cash flow information with the owner.
« We see that some owners use this visibility as a way of monitoring, but perhaps positively, their drivers. That is to say that the driver can show that he is working. There were information problems in this sectorsays Deivy Houeix. Drivers sometimes had trouble proving to their owner that they were working. And so the fact that they were not collecting enough money was not due to their work, but due to the vagaries of the trade. »
Confidence improved in these small taxi companies and owners were more likely to pay their drivers. There are still a few blockages for membership to be total, firstly access to smartphones, but also the cost of mobile payments, 1% for drivers with “business” applications. Mouhamadou sometimes chooses cash payments to avoid fees. ” The main problem is the fees. Customers refuse to pay them themselves so it is up to us to deduct them from our shopping. Wave should revisit this. »
Mobile money is booming in sub-Saharan Africa. In Senegal, more than two thirds of the inhabitants now use this method of payment.
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