Experimental Design
This transparency experiment is designed to estimate the effects of price transparency on customer behaviour, as well as the market returns to price transparency. For this, we will work with a random sample of agents working with our bank partner. Randomly selected clients of these agents will receive a WhatsApp message from the bank summarizing the official prices for the most common types of branchless banking transactions. The clients of the remaining agents will receive a placebo message that makes no mention of the bank’s official prices. Making use of the bank’s administrative data, we will be able to document the causal effects of price transparency on relevant outcome variables, such as take-up and usage of the products offered by agents. We will also be able to observe outcomes at the agent level, such as the balance in her account. We will complement these administrative data with information obtained from surveys with clients in which we will collect detailed information on the agent’s behaviour (transparency, sales strategies, etc.) and clients’ trust on the agent. This experiment will establish the extent to which branchless banking clients can use the information on actual prices for transactions to hold their agents accountable and, as a consequence, are more (or less) likely to use branchless banking products.