Archive

Archive for February, 2010


GSMA Hosts Central African Mobile Money Roundtable – Focus on Regional Regulation

By: Paul Leishman: February 25th, 2010

On Tuesday in Yaounde, we hosted the GSMA Central African Mobile Money Roundtable. This was the first regional event of its kind hosted by the GSMA, and it was designed to share information and experiences regulating mobile money with BEAC, the financial services regulator for the Economic Community of Central African States, which includes Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

The roundtable was attended by MTN, Orange, Zain, Camtel, Citibank, Afriland First Bank, BEAC, BCEAO, Central Bank of Kenya (thanks to the support of the Alliance of Financial Inclusion), Bank of Ghana, CGAP and GSMA.

So why did we choose to host our first regional regulatory roundtable in Cameroon?

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Region: Africa: Central |
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Views: 456

The Consumer Protections Built Into Branchless Banking

By: Guest Blogger: February 24th, 2010

As regulators confront the challenges of regulating branchless banking, protecting the consumer is often their primary concern. And for good reason. Branchless banking is a new service targeting the least sophisticated customers and introducing new actors such as mobile network operators and retail agents into a sector formerly reserved for well capitalized and regulated commercial banks. As a result, there can be an understandable tendency to err on the side of caution.

But compliance with regulations comes at a cost – and that cost is ultimately passed on to the consumer…

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Region: Global |
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Views: 544

2010 Mobile World Congress: Day 2 of Mobile Money in Review

By: Paul Leishman: February 16th, 2010

Today was day number two of Mobile World Congress, and for me (and most readers of our blog), the highlight had to be the MMU Working Group. Mobile operators, vendors and other industry stakeholders convened to exchange learnings in our full-day interactive session.
The focus of the day was agent distribution, and conversations ranged from individual [...]

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Region: Global |
Comments: 1 Comment »
Views: 654

2010 Mobile World Congress: Day 1 of Mobile Money in Review

By: Paul Leishman: February 15th, 2010

The first day of the 2010 Mobile World Congress has officially come to a close. Today was an eventful day for anyone interested in mobile money: this year, we introduced ‘Mobile Money Monday’, an action packed day filled with presentations and panels from the likes of SMART, Telenor, Turkcell, Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, Roshan, SingTel, Axiata, [...]

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Region: Global |
Comments: 2 Comments »
Views: 1273

Mobile Money at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2010

By: Seema Desai: February 12th, 2010

Barcelona will take on a distinctly mobile flavour next week, as 50,000 people descend on the Catalan capital for GSMA Mobile World Congress. Monday will be devoted to mobile money, and our 4th MMU Working Group will take place on Tuesday…

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Region: Global |
Comments: 1 Comment »
Views: 590

New GSMA Case Study on Thailand’s True Money

By: Paul Leishman: February 4th, 2010

Today, we’re publishing a case study that compares Thailand’s True Money with the industry’s best known success story, M-PESA.

Launched in 2005, True Money is now used by 6 million customers. The system processes over USD$900 million in electronic payments and 120 million transactions per year. This doesn’t match the US$3.5 billion in P2P payments M-PESA processes per year, but it does suggest that the model has gained some traction…

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Region: South East Asia |
Comments: 1 Comment »
Views: 1426