Page 58 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Consumer Experience and Protection

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Consumer Experience and Protection

provider branches, customer care centres and agent outlets. A scan of a number of provider websites makes
clear that additional details on product offers and other terms are often not contained in the contracts but
instead in other places. See also Box 2 for sample user agreements deemed suspect with regard to a failure
to transparently communicate prices.

The net result is that consumers may not be aware of the costs of services and other important contract terms
and it may not be possible for them to discover what those terms are by accessing sources like websites,
particularly for those who use Short Message Service (SMS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)
or for those who do not have access to the Internet.
In addition to the above, it was also observed that providers do not always disclose the consequences of
default for credit products; yet, this is a key term that customers should be made aware of before they accept
a loan facility.

Box 1: Language & transparency of communications

Malawi & Uganda

• Malawi, Consumer Protection Act (2003)

26-(1) Standard form contracts or agreements shall (b) be drafted in the official language and in
characters readable at single sight by any normal sighted person: and
(c) where the contract is entered into locally, have a written translation into the national local language
and shall be read and explained to an illiterate, blind, mute and similarly disabled consumer in a
language he understands.
27(3) For the purposes of this section, an unfair consumer contract means a contract which (e)
if in case of a written consumer contract, if the contract is expressed in a language not ordinarily
understood by the consumer.

• Uganda, Financial Consumer Protection Guidelines issued by the Bank of Uganda to address the
needs of illiterate consumers-
Guideline 8(1) e) states that “where a consumer is unable to understand written information, explain
orally to the consumer the written information”;

Guideline 8(1) f) “ensure that where an oral explanation in paragraph 8(1)(d) and (e) has been
provided to the consumer, the consumer shall have a third party to countersign as evidence that an
oral explanation has been given to the consumer”;

Comment:

The contracts available in both Malawi and Uganda were in English and it could therefore be argued
that they are not written in a language comprehensible to all customers, particularly those who are
illiterate. Also for DFS products, it is unclear whether oral explanations are being provided to illiterate
and disabled consumers.

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