Social Media Usage by Digital Finance Consumers

The digitization of financial services has been on the rise in the past years and has experienced a particularly big leap after the COVID-19 pandemic due to the temporary closure of physical offices and bank branches of many financial service providers. As financial services go digital, so do consumers by sharing their experiences, complaints and reviews through online channels and social media. Increasing use of social media channels to share feedback, concerns, and challenges provides new opportunities for insights into issues affecting digital consumers which can complement traditional methods such as phone or in-person consumer surveys.

To explore these opportunities, IPA piloted a social media listening and analysis project for consumer protection monitoring in digital financial services. The project collects historical data on consumer protection-relevant content published on Twitter, Facebook Public Pages and Google Play Store Reviews and analyzes it using Artificial Intelligence algorithms based on Natural Language Processing and semi-supervised machine learning. The analysis provides insights into the types of consumer protection issues faced by consumers across countries and financial providers, classified into four types:

1. Commercial banks.
2. Telecommunication companies offering mobile money services.
3. Fintech start-ups mainly offering online lending products and payment methods.
4. Microfinance institutions.