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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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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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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.
