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Guest Blogger: January 28th, 2010
This is a guest post, from Amitabh Saxena. Amitabh started the Alternative Channels workstream at ACCION in 2006 after spending several years in developing credit card products for Capital One’s Innovation Center. He has worked in strategy and implementation of various channels, particularly prepaid cards and mobile, for ACCION’s partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Last week in this space was an insightful blog post on the intersection of Mobile Money and Microfinance. I spent a number of years at a leading microfinance network called ACCION International, managing a new workstream I started called Alternative Channels, and last month wrote a comprehensive paper on how microfinance institutions (MFIs) can be a more active stakeholder in the m-banking space. So why and how can mobile operators approach these entities?
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Paul Leishman: January 27th, 2010
Recently I caught up with Azad Delwar Hossain, Head of Financial Services for Grameenphone in Bangladesh. Grameenphone launched a service called ‘BillPay’ in 2006, which allows customers to pay utility bills over the counter, or through an e-wallet. In this interview, Azad provides insights into all aspects of their model, but key three insights emerge that all operators deploying payment offerings should consider:
1. Ensuring right commission spread and loyalty of channel partner
2. How market conditions impact business models
3. The importance of trust
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Paul Leishman: January 26th, 2010
Globe recently announced that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has approved their request to use Globe Telecom Sub Distributors as GCASH outlets. Building on Globe’s announcement to launch BanKO in late 2009, this announcement marks the start to what will be a busy 2010 for the team at G-Xchange.
The move to leverage Globe sub-distributors makes sense. For years, GCASH have used pawnshops, rural banks, and Globe Business Centres as cash in/out agents, but haven’t made an aggressive push to use any tier of their airtime distribution network. Globe has pursued this path until now for many reasons, but let’s explore three…
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Neil Davidson: January 19th, 2010
Over the past three decades, microfinance has given millions of people access to financial services for the first time. As such, it’s exciting to watch how mobile money providers and microfinance institutions are starting to work together to improve further the quality and range of financial services available to the poor. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the assets and capabilities of microfinance institutions and mobile money service providers are complementary; we see three specific kinds of collaboration…
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Paul Leishman: January 13th, 2010
Today we launched the GSMA Mobile Money Deployment Tracker. This new interactive tool has been designed to track the number of live and planned mobile money deployments targeting the unbanked segment, and present relevant data on the models and countries in which they operate.
If you’re already curious to learn more, check out the site, download the Google Earth plug-in, and explore. Here’s a quick review of the features…
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Paul Leishman: January 8th, 2010
In December, we shared an article by Ignacio Mas that described how microfinance is being ‘reframed’. That is, until now microfinance has implied micro ‘funding’ of poor clients with loans, whereas many now recognize that going forward, microsavings will be a critical instrument to meet the financial needs of base of pyramid customers. Ignacio’s December article outlined the four key elements in the discussion underpinning the viability of bringing microsavings offerings to market.
Today, we’re sharing a new article by Bob Christen and Ignacio Mas. This article elaborates on why savings is so important – and suggests how the microsavings model might work in practice. That is, what role each player, including mobile operators, banks and MFIs, might play in developing a system capable of delivering microsavings to all, profitably.
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Paul Leishman: January 5th, 2010
The launch of Pakistan’s ‘easypaisa’ by Telenor and Tameer Microfinance Bank was one of the most exciting deployments of 2009. Targeting the massive unbanked segment and initially supported by a network of 2,000 agents, it’s not surprising that easypaisa is seeing early signs of success. Having been live for less than two months, almost 250,000 customers have used the bill payment or money transfer services initially available and there are positive signs that repeat business will be strong.
I recently caught up with Arif Qayyum from Telenor and Abbas Sikander from Tameer Microfinance Bank to learn more about their approach. Our conversation covered three broad themes:
1. The structure of a mobile operator / bank partnership
2. Approach to agent distribution
3. Their product launch roadmap and plans to drive adoption of an e-wallet
