Supporters of mobile money in Haiti say take-up has been below expectations although they still think such services will ultimately  prove popular because of Haitians’ reliance on mobile services, says a report on Associated Press. So far about 800,000 have registered for mobile money in Haiti but with only about 22,000 regularly using the service says the report.

The country has been viewed as a potential testbed for how mobile money can help rebuild a society recovering from an earthquake where most of the population are unbanked. Mobile money allows users to keep money on their handsets electronically and spend in retail outlets around the country or make P2P transfers to friends or families. Services in Haiti, which are SMS-based, have been  launched by local operators Digicel and Voila.

NGOs argue it takes time to scale up a base of active users. They also point to the enormous barriers to getting services off the ground in a country suffering from political instability, violence and disease.

The report indicates that there are problems with users trusting the service and learning how to use it, according to NGO World Vision which has signed up 6,000 people to the service but only has 1,000 active users. On one occasion, subscribers were told by a local agent that they could not collect payments because there was no money available. Such incidents damage credibility of the service among the local population.

However the article also quotes the positive experience of one local resident who said the mobile money service meant he no longer had to queue for a long time at a bank branch to send money.