By:
Neil Daly: October 29th, 2009
This week Belgacom ICS and RBS announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding for the facilitation of foreign currency exchange for mobile remittances. The MOU increases the flexibility in the Homesend international remittance product offered by Belgacom ICS. With RBS’s FXmicropay system provisioning wholesale FX rates to Belgacom, mobile operators now have the choice of whether to manage their own FX risk through the traditional roaming settlement clearing model or to benefit from RBS’s position as a market making bank with access to low FX rates.
How does it work?
By:
Guest Blogger: October 23rd, 2009
ID systems in developing countries attract a lot of attention from the financial inclusion sector. And for good reason – in many cases they can be a key factor contributing to the uptake of mobile money. In recent months, there have been some big announcements in this space, notably India stating their intention to roll out a national ID system that would see each of their 1 billion + citizens provided with a biometric ID. And just this week Bruno Akpaka from MTN Ghana identified the low incidence of Ghanians carrying ID cards with them in public as a key barrier to the uptake of mobile money.
With this in mind, Dr. Nicola Jentzsch, Senior Research Fellow at the Technische Universität Berlin and the DIW Berlin, provides a snapshot of the existence and type of national ID systems around the world.
How will ID systems shape the adoption and usage patterns of mobile money? Dr. Jentzsch has clarified the global landscape – read the post and join the conversation.
By:
Paul Leishman: October 21st, 2009
Earlier this week I spoke with Bruno Akpaka, Head of MTN Mobile Money in Ghana. MTN have rapidly grown the network of MTN Mobile Money merchants using a unique approach that is closely linked to their partnership with 9 banks in Ghana. Similarly exciting is the process for opening new customer accounts, which involves capturing the customer’s ID with a mobile phone – this provides flexibility and an opportunity to scale the points of registration over time.
Read the full interview here.
By:
Paul Leishman: October 21st, 2009
Today we launched a new feature on the blog – the mobile money video directory. Click on the ‘Videos’ link at right to check it out. There are already more than 50 videos in the directory, and this number will continue to grow.
By:
Paul Leishman: October 17th, 2009
Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Microfinance Bank yesterday announced the launch of ‘Easypaisa’, described as ‘a uniquely convenient and safe way for the people of Pakistan to carry out financial transactions.’ This is the latest chapter in Telenor’s strategy to offer financial services in Pakistan, which began in November 2008 with the purchase of a 51% stake in Tameer Microfinance Bank for USD$12.5 million.
It will be exciting to track the progress of Easypaisa in the months to come, but even from day one the service sparks conversation as the model looks more like Grameenphone’s Billpay service available in Bangladesh and less like other mobile money launches that have made headlines in 2009 from the likes of Zain, MTN and Vodafone.
Here are three main ways that Easypaisa differs from others:
By:
Paul Leishman: October 5th, 2009
In the wake of mobile money featuring on the cover of The Economist, many are surely asking where the next success story will come from. In this article, Ignacio Mas and Amrik Heyer analyse the environmental dynamics affecting the uptake of mobile money. The authors demonstrate that aside from strong strategy and good business models, the uptake of financial services in developing countries is dependent on the extent of market penetration and the political environments in which they take root.
By:
Paul Leishman: October 1st, 2009
Earlier this week I spoke with Richard Mwami, Head of MTN Mobile Money in Uganda. Richard described the model that MTN has taken to market in the country, the agent network that has been built, and the growth they have experienced to date.
