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Overcharging
Overcharging is one of the most common consumer complaints in digital financial services, and often disproportionately affects women. In Ghana, female customers are between 41 and 55 percent more likely to be overcharged than male customers during mobile money transactions. Women's lower digital literacy and limited recourse mechanisms make them more vulnerable. This barrier is only further reinforced by widespread perceptions that women are less financially savvy and leads to biased behaviors across the sector. Overcharging erodes savings, undermines trust, and pushes customers toward informal alternatives.
17 Connected Barriers
Most Relevant Segments
- 01. Excluded, marginalized
- 02. Excluded, high potential
- 03. Included, underserved
- 04. Included, not underserved
Most Relevant Customer Journey Phases
- Phase 1: Account Ownership
- Phase 2: Basic Account Usage
- Phase 3: Active Account Usage
- Phase 4: Economic Empowerment
Key Evidence
Evidence suggests that hidden fees, taxes on mobile transactions, and other costs are common and prohibitive features of digital financial services.
Critically, evidence suggests that women are more likely than men to face overcharging due to real differences between women’s and men’s financial capabilities, including the ability to understand and navigate complex fee structures, and also as a result of perceptions that women are less aware of true costs and more susceptible to scams.
- Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) finds that 33% of digital finance customers in Nigeria cite “agent charged extra to complete a transaction” as a common challenge. This is the most cited challenge among customers. (Innovations for Poverty Action, 2021)
- IPA finds that customers faced a significant risk of overcharging when using mobile money services: 19% of transactions in Tanzania, 18% in Bangladesh, and 11% in Uganda involved agents charging unofficial extra fees. Tanzanian providers charge some of the highest fees for mobile money transactions, an average rate of 8.6% for cashing out. Tanzania’s tax rate is higher than that of most countries, contributing to the overall high cost of mobile money transactions. (Innovations for Poverty Action, 2023)
Interventions that have successfully addressed this barrier
The following Exemplar represents one evidence-based interventions that has shown success in addressing this particular barrier. There may be other Exemplars for this barrier in the larger Barriers & Exemplars Analysis compendium deck.
Assessing the impact of introducing electronic payroll accounts to a population of largely unbanked garment factory workers in Bangladesh.
