Page 213 - The Digital Financial Services (DFS) Ecosystem

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Ecosystem

Table 2 – Summary of ACD elements

Data element Examples of ACD

Air-time top-up • Amount and frequency of adding call, text, and data to SIM
Digital payments • Value, number, frequency, day/time as well as with whom the e-money account is
crediting or debiting, use of funds
• Sales data from online marketplaces (e.g., Amazon, Snapdeal)
Phone data • Phone model, operating system
• Contact list (length)
• Browser data (e.g., pages viewed)
• Installed apps
• Location
• Transaction account balance
Phone usage • Number and time of day of calls and texts in/out
• Content of communications (grammar, complexity, vocabulary, and subject)

Social media • Connections
• Content of social media posts (e.g., grammar, complexity, vocabulary, subject)

Psychometrics • Surveys to assess attitudes, beliefs, honesty, and intelligence

ACD programs are also using customer’s digital data to verify identity. This reduces the need for documentation
and manual review, saves customers time, and reduces data-entry errors and application abandonment.

Twelve programs were reviewed that use one or more of these elements in emerging markets around the
world. Following are two examples (See Appendix 2 for others).

Figure 1 – Branch

Company Branch

Overview Based in San Francisco and with offices in Nairobi, Kenya, Branch (branch.co) allows applicants
to login with social media (i.e., Facebook) to improve authentication and reduce application data
collection. Branch analyzes mobile wallet data (i.e., M-Pesa activity) as well as calling patterns,
contact lists, and social media behaviour.
Loans are issued in 10 minutes. Branch is not a legal deposit institution and partners with KCB (a
Kenyan bank) to issue loans. Their average loan is equivalent to $30 USD with repayment of up
to 6 months. Default rates hover around 5 per cent.
As of December 2015, Branch has issued over 50,000 loans. Branch is active in Kenya and is cur-
rently integrating with MTN in Uganda and Vodacom in Tanzania.

Differentiator • Uses social media to authenticate
• Analyzes phone contact lists

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