Mobile Banking as Enabling and Constraining Financial Inclusion in Pakistan- A Theoretical Perspective

This paper provides a theoretical framework for exploring the role of new technologies for ‘banking’ the poor via mobile banking (m-banking) for financial inclusion in developing countries. It extends the literature beyond previous studies that examined m-banking through a technological or economic lens from the provider’s perspective, or from a collective national or regional level focussing on the individual user’s perspective. Thus the aim of the paper is to bridge the theoretical and methodological gap by justifying the application of Orlikowski’s Duality of Technology, as a socio-technical lens to evaluate how the social construction of m-banking enables and constrains poor women to access government-to person (G2P) payments, or digital social cash in Pakistan- a country that has been previously under researched. By shifting the level of analysis to the organisational level, the structuration framework helps us investigate the social and economic impact of m-banking in the restructuring of poor households for financial inclusion in Pakistan, and the effect of external and internal institutional forces in the redesign of emerging new technologies and financial practices. Furthermore, the paper debates why the socio-materiality of technology fails to provide a conceptual framework for this research. To conclude the paper highlights how the Duality of Technology contributes to new knowledge through a socio-technical perspective that underpins the philosophical orientation of the research to study the complex relationship between m-banking, households structures and social actors that provide an interpretive frame within the case study of the Benazir Income Support Programme in Pakistan.