Local Ambassadors Promote Mobile Banking in Northern Peru

Abstract

We experiment with a novel way to boost information acquisition that exploits existing social ties between the promoter of a new financial technology and community members. We offer information and training workshops on a new mobile-money platform in periurban and rural areas in Peru. In the treatment group, workshops are led by promoters who are personally known to the invited participants. In the control group, comparable individuals are invited to attend similar workshops, but the workshops are led by agents external to the community. Our findings suggest that lack of information impedes product adoption, which is itself limited by lack of trust in the individual who provides the information.