Some places in Africa, you get paid in 'minutes' on your phone. Some app lets you transfer this credit, and thus it's used as some sort of cashless payment.
If I remember it right.
So anyway it seems the article's question can be answered with a resounding No! if folks in Africa see this as cheaper than ordinary currency.
The experience in Africa and Asia does seem to suggest that, like it or not, many people who are clearly poor appear able to deal with cashless transactions just fine. Of course, arguably it's become more the norm in some places (and maybe cash is more problematic) so people just deal with it.
The problem lies in credit card system, which discriminates against poor. As long as the cashless system is not built on top of a credit card, it does not have the problem. Look, a person with volatile currency can use bitcoin to protect himself, other financial instruments to do so normally only available for the very rich.
Africa had this running via SMS on flip phones over a decade ago, no app needed. You didn't have payment terminals much of anywhere outside the big cities, so that's just how electronic payments on the ground tended to work.
If I remember it right.
So anyway it seems the article's question can be answered with a resounding No! if folks in Africa see this as cheaper than ordinary currency.