In my last post, I wrote about the significance of churn reduction benefits to the profitability case for mobile money; and when people talk about indirect benefits, ‘reduction in churn’ is usually closely followed in the same sentence by ‘uplift in ARPU’ (Average Revenue Per User). Having shed light on the important role churn benefits can play in the context of profitability, now we’ll focus on the role of uplift in ARPU. But before we answer the question posed in the title of this post, let’s first determine whether ‘uplift in ARPU’ is even the right metric for practitioners to measure.

If you’ve ever attended a mobile money conference, you’ve likely heard a speaker tout the potential benefit of ‘reduced churn’ that mobile money can unlock for an MNO. But what you probably haven’t heard is whether any service has actually delivered on this promise – and if so, whether the subsequent benefits amount to a big or small deal in the overall financial model.

One of the most important sources of value for mobile network operators (MNOs) who offer mobile money services is the ability to sell airtime using the platform. When a customer buys airtime using mobile money rather than with scratch cards, operators unlock value in two ways. First, they pay lower commissions: the commissions paid to agents for performing cash-in (a necessary step before buying airtime) are typically lower than the discounts at which MNOs sell airtime to the channel—although the degree of difference will vary by market.

In my last post I began to describe MTN Uganda’s MobileMoney, a service that has turned an exciting corner into cash-flow positive territory. But the CFO of any mobile network operator (MNO) knows that simply getting out of the red on a month-to-month basis is not enough; his alternative investment options are usually very attractive, so he needs to know just how much is required to scale a mobile money service – and whether future income will justify the spend.

From Afghanistan to Zambia, mobile network operators (MNOs) in developing countries are launching mobile money services at a rapid pace. Yet while their enthusiasm to enter this business is clear – to date 83 deployments have been launched and another 82 are being planned – their rationale for doing so is not. There’s no doubt that Safaricom’s runaway hit, M-PESA, is profitable. But Kenya represents somewhat of an anomaly – the perfect coalescence of latent demand, a dominant MNO and a progressive regulator. So the question remains for just about every MNO outside of Kenya: is there really any money in mobile money?

By now, most mobile money practitioners recognize that for a service to succeed, the agents that support it need to be making money. In recent months, we’ve written about how mobile network operators have carefully managed their customer/agent ratios over time to ensure agents are provided with a sufficient volume of transactions to stay interested – but volume is only half of the equation. To keep agents happy, mobile network operators must also ensure the commission models they present to agents are well designed

Before launching a mobile money service, it behoves operators to think carefully about how to prevent abuse that would harm customers. Such foresight helps assure regulators that the service will be safe

Today GSMA is publishing a case study on ‘Zap’, Zain’s mobile money service that was introduced in February 2009. In just over a year, Zap has been deployed in Bahrain, Kenya, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Niger, Malawi and Uganda. But while Zain’s desire to make Zap ubiquitous is clear, so far their approach to designing mobile money ecosystems has been less well documented – and perhaps a bit misunderstood.

Today we are publishing the second section of the GSMA handbook on agent networks, entitled “How to Incentivise a Network of Mobile Money Agents”. In this section, we seek to answer a broad question: how can mobile network operators design a set of incentives that encourage agents to become active and productive participants in mobile money distribution?

If you weren’t at Mobile World Congress, you would have missed a very interesting co-presentation from Qasif Shahid, EVP at MCB Bank and Aletha Ling, Executive Director at Fundamo. Qasif and Aletha provided an overview of MCB Mobile, which launched in June 2009 in Pakistan and have since gained some impressive traction, registering over 70,000 customers to date.

Something particularly interesting about the deployment is their decision to launch using a shared platform. To understand more about their approach, I recently had a conversation with Qasif Shahid and Mazahir Ali Sayeed from MCB, and Hannes van Rensburg from Fundamo…