Designing Payment Models for the Poor

The authors express their deep gratitude to Donal Connolly, Director of Credit & Collections at d.light, for sustained engagement and insightful discussions on d.light’s business model, which greatly enhanced the authors’ understanding of the practical challenges in implementing repayment mechanisms in sub-Saharan Africa and how the features of the optimal contract can be translated into practice. The authors also appreciate the constructive guidance of the department editor, associate editor, and three anonymous referees, whose comments substantially strengthened the paper. The authors are thankful for valuable feedback from Manel Baucells, Zhi Chen, Stephen Chick, Sripad Devalkar, Jiatao Ding, Sameer Hasija, Zhenyu Hu, Serguei Netessine, Alp Sungu, Chris Tang, Ilia Tsetlin, and Gloria Yu, as well as from seminar participants at Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Summer Camp at Singapore Management University, Singapore Analytics & Operations Day, the INFORMS Annual Meetings, and the MSOM Conference.