CGAP holds that smartphones are likely to become the main interface for mobile money use. A well-designed interface will drive growth, profitability and a much improved user experience.

Unlike clunky and clumsy hierarchical menu-driven interfaces (e.g., SIM toolkit or USSD), smartphone interfaces open a whole range of creative options: touchscreens, graphics, real-time messaging, images, sound and animation. CGAP and its partners at Wave Money, Microsoft Research, GRID Impact, Karandaaz Pakistan, Small Surfaces, IDEO.org and others have been experimenting in low-income settings with smartphone interface designs.

This blog series shares learnings from several perspectives. CGAP and partners have also built an initial compilation of smartphone interface design principles. This set of principles begins to build a common repository of approaches that can make Smartphone interfaces useful, transparent and accessible to the poor.