Serving the Unbanked… By Serving the Banked. Lessons from Safaricom, SMART, Globe and Zain.
In mobile money, we spend a lot of time talking about innovative ways to deliver financial services to the unbanked poor in spite of their income, geographic and trust barriers to banking. But what about serving the banked? This post explores three ways that leading mobile money deployments use technology to serve the banked and/or those who are key sources of funds, including:
- Automating the cash-in step (video of SMART auto-reloader)
- Integrating with bank accounts
- Offering ATM access
Chris Gabriel, CEO Zain Africa, at GSMA Mobile Money Summit: “Your mobile phone today will be your wallet tomorrow”
If you missed the GSMA Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona this year, be sure to check out this recording from the event of Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain Africa. Chris’ positive outlook for mobile money comes through loud and clear. He reiterates Zain’s plan to get “every one of Zain’s 15 African operations committed and connected to one network and Zain Zap” by the end of Q3 2009, and notes that as an industry we’re going ‘from evolution to revolution. This is just the beginning of a transformational journey’.
