more complex to use, and more susceptible to consumer protection issues.

The results in Table 5, summarized in Figure 6, show that the payroll account treatment increases trust in the technology, particularly so in the case of mobile money accounts. While the treatment effects are positive for both the bank payroll and bank account only treatments, relative to control, the effects are not statistically significant.<sup>40</sup> Moreover, the impacts are not detectably different between the payroll and account only groups. In contrast, the mobile payroll accounts are particularly effective at increasing trust. Receiving a simple mobile account increases trust in leaving 1,000 BDT by 8.2 percentage points (p-value 0.036), an increase of 22% relative to the control mean. The payroll account treatment has an even larger effect, increasing trust in the account by 16.8 percentage points (p-value 0.031), an increase 44% relative to control. We can also reject equality of the payroll and account only treatments. Receiving a payroll account almost completely eliminates the trust gap between mobile money and bank accounts. Against the background of the learning results, our preferred interpretation of this finding is that active engagement with a formal account promoted by the payroll account treatment causes customers to learn how to use the technology in a more effective and cost-saving manner. This, in turn allows them to sidestep common financial consumer protection risks, such as illicit transaction fees, and generates greater trust in the financial technology. It is not surprising that this effect is larger in the case of mobile money accounts for which baseline trust is lower, consumer protection risks are more severe, and the scope for learning about the features of the technology is greater.

# **4.2 Real Effects: Savings, Consumption, and Shock-Mitigation**

In this section, we report the impact of payroll accounts on real outcomes. While the main interest of our study is on how inexperienced individuals learn to use the financial technology, we also measure the extent to which engagement with accounts affects real outcomes, such as total savings, consumption, and the ability to cope with unanticipated economic shocks. Our analysis of real effects relies mainly on survey data, which allows us to capture a richer set of outcomes than administrative data alone. We report results for all outcomes that are available in administrative and survey data in the appendix and show that the results are consistent.

**Savings.** In Table 6, we examine the effect of payroll accounts on savings, remittances, and shock-mitigation. Panel A shows results based on endline survey data only, panel B reports results from the combined panel of follow-up and endline surveys. The results in column (1) reveal that the payroll account treatment had a strong positive effect on the extensive margin of savings and increased the share of participants who reported having any savings by approximately 4 percentage points at endline and 11 percentage points when we use the full panel of midline and endline surveys.

> 40We note that between baseline and endline, trust in both technologies in the control group increased substantially. This may be due to the increased prevalence of formal accounts in Dhaka or because of spillovers from the treatments onto the control group. In the presence of spillovers, the coefficients would be underestimates.

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