The Maua app was launched by two Samoan tech entrepreneurs who saw it not only as a way of encouraging Samoan businesses to adopt digital channels, but of maintaining the strong community ties on which so many families rely. With so many young Samoans leaving the villages to work in the city, or joining the growing diaspora community, the app aimed to give people a way to directly support their relatives and maintain the sense of culture and community that binds Samoan families together. Co-founder Sam Saili recalls yearning for “Samoan delicacies” while studying abroad and wishing there was a way he could send gifts to his family and friends.

Digital Financial Services (DFS) were central to the vision that the founders had when they created Maua. They recognised the potential of digital money not only to maintain social ties in an increasingly international Samoan community, but as an opportunity to boost the growth of local companies and open up economic opportunities to remote communities. Already in 2011 Digicel launched its mobile money service in Samoa, and with the acquisition of BlueSky by Vodafone Fiji parent ATH in 2019, the country saw another mobile money service to be launched - M-Tala. The app uses the same mobile money infrastructure as Vodafone Fiji’s popular M-PAiSA service. In an effort to accelerate the uptake of mobile money in Samoa, GSMA supported the founders of Maua with technical assistance and grant funding that was contingent on them exclusively accepting digital payments on their platform for a period of two years. Given that this aligned with their own vision for the platform, the founders did not hesitate to accept this support.

The platform they developed was designed to be simple and scalable, offering customers and merchants a simple interface that imitates social media platforms such as Facebook. However, despite early success in signing up a range of merchants, they struggled to generate significant growth in sales. Having trialled a range of different strategies, it became apparent that digital payment was a barrier to customer acquisition: people either didn’t have a mobile money account or they didn’t feel comfortable using it online.

Once the two year commitment to GSMA elapsed, the Maua team introduced the acceptance of cash payments. The effect was immediate: monthly sales grew exponentially, fuelled almost entirely by cash payments. Today, cash payments make up almost 70% of the platform’s sales volume, significantly increasing the overheads and the risks associated with each sale. In a business with such fine margins, it only take a few cash transactions going missing to fully erase the company’s margins for the day.

Maua’s experience with digital payments illustrates the challenges that come with the introduction of DFS in a cash-based economy. When digital finance services are launched, very often there are only a limited number of opportunities to use them and, in most cases, these are not sufficient to overcome natural inertia and a reluctance to trust new and relatively untested technology. Interestingly, the Maua team have seen a leap in the number of digital payments since the electricity utility mandated that all cash power payments be performed using M-Tala. This mirrors a digital payments trend observed by the Pacific Financial Inclusions Programme (PFIP): use of DFS increases in direct proportion with the number of use-cases available, especially when these are enforced by players that are not impacted by the forces of the market, such as utility providers.

This also demonstrates the important role the government can play beyond just being a regulator in driving the uptake of DFS in the region. The unique experience from the Maua team shows that a persistent and long term strategic view are critical for DFS providers to survive the tough Pacific markets.

For further information contact Sheldon Chanel, Communications Officer,
UNCDF: sheldon.chanel@uncdf.org