IMTFI At A Glance

What is IMTFI?

• IMTFI is a premier research organization focusing on the impact of new digital and mobile payment systems on the lives of the poor in the developing  world.
• IMTFI ensures the voices and perspectives of researchers on the ground are integrated into the global conversation on financial inclusion.
• Established in 2008 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supported 147 individual research projects in 47 countries, collaborated with 187 different researchers.

Publications

• MONEY AT THE MARGINS: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design edited by Bill Maurer, Smoki Musaraj, and Ivan Small. Introduction online.
• "Mapping the Intermediate: Lived Technologies of Money and Value", special themed JCE issue by guest editors Mrinalini Tankha and Ursula Dalinghaus.
• Virtually Irreplaceable: Cash as Public Infrastructure (White Paper) by Ursula Dalinghaus
• How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money by Bill Maurer Duke University Press.
• Riding the Rails of Mobile Payments: Financial Inclusion, Mobile Phones, and Infrastructure by Stephen Rea, Ursula Dalinghaus, Taylor Nelms and Bill Maurer in The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography Edited by Larissa Hjorth, Heather Horst, Anne Galloway and Genevieve Bell. London: Routledge.

See IMTFI/Fellows - Publications
See IMTFI/Fellows in the Media

Videos

• Introduction: The Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI)
• Social Networks of Mobile Money in Western Kenya
• The Use of M-Shwari in the Jua Kali Sector
• Addressing Poverty through Mobile Money Technology
• Nigel Thrift Discusses Errors in the Monetary System
• Keith Hart Discussing the Kina Shell Necklace

View IMTFI's video collection on YouTube

IMTFI Syntheses

• Trust and Money: It's Complicated
  Digital Payment Client Uptake: Warning Signs and Ways Forward
  Mobile Money: The First Decade
• Design Principles
• New Organizational Models: Open Research in financial services.

View more IMTFI Syntheses

Photos

• "M-Pesa" by Ivan Small
• "Coming of Age" by Sibel Kusimba
• "The Soothsayer's Equipment" by Francis Santuah
• "Interviewing Bike Repairers in Kenya" by Ndunge Kiiti
• "Currencies and Transactions in Mexico" by Magdalena Villarreal

View IMTFI Flickr stream

Money Archive

• View IMTFI's own Money Archive, representing our ongoing efforts to digitize and upload images of an extensive collection of artifacts donated by our researchers, graduate students, and money-enthusiasts over the years.
• Has a collection of interesting money items that it loans to places like the British Museum, the Smithsonian and special exhibits such as USC's "Trillion$" exhibition commemorating the Federal Reserve's Centennial.
• Search IMTFI money objects in the British Museum's online collection database HERE.
• UC Irvine's Langson Library exhibit, "Gold to Gigabytes: The Past, Present, and Future of Money" documented by REAL ORANGE on PBS SoCal. The show features an interview with Maurer and footage from the collections. Visit here to view the segment on PBS SoCal.