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Lack of access to finance is suspected to be an important impediment to development in low-income countries. Some symptoms consistent with binding liquidity constraints include high marginal returns to capital, 1 difficulty coping with unexpected income shocks such as household illness, 2 and a response of investment in durable goods such as bednets or water connections in response to credit (Tarozzi et al. 2013; Devoto et al. 2011). While these stylized facts suggest unmet demand for credit, take-up of microfinance has been rather low in experimental trials and impacts have been modest (Banerjee et al. 2015). This has led some observers to question whether microfinance is a valuable development program, or whether resources should be put elsewhere. A plausible reason that microcredit has been disappointing is that the existing set of credit products might not be appropriate for target customers. For example, many microcredit products still involve large transaction costs (such as travel costs to the nearest bank branch or time costs in regular group meetings), have imposing loan terms, or significantly restrict how loans can be used. In the past few years, digital credit has emerged as an alternative mechanism for providing short-term loans. In a typical digital credit offering, a mobile phone operator will partner with a financial institution to provide small, short-term loans directly to customers over an existing mobile money ecosystem (we discuss other models of digital credit later). This approach offers several advantages to existing microcredit or bank credit. First, digital credit has the potential to dramatically lower transaction costs, since …