2011, a year in review – Part 1
Posted: December 21st, 2011 | viewed: (1,096) | Comments: ( 0 ) | Topic: Blog Post |
As we’re winding down for the year, we are highlighting some of the major events and articles from the MMU Blog in 2011, including the 2011 Mobile World Congress and the mobile money Summit in Singapore.
1. MMU article on the relationships between banks and mobile operators
Offering a mobile money service for the unbanked requires the participation of both a bank and a mobile operator. That means these two parties need to align on what parts of the mobile money value chain each will carry out, agree on a way of working with each other, and decide how to split the value that is created by the service. To shed some light on the issues that can complicate bank-operator relationships, the MMU team released in January an article called “Mapping and Effective Structuring Operator-Bank Relationships to Offer Mobile Money for the Unbanked”
2. GSMA Hosts Webinar on Mobile Money Pricing and Commissions.
The MMU programme hosted a webinar on the topic of mobile money pricing and commissions. This interactive session was designed to help mobile money practitioners capture best practices from deployments around the world. In part 1, we shared the pricing component which best practices in valuing a mobile money service, structuring a tariff sheet and proofing against fraud and in part 2, we discussed best practices in setting mobile money commissions including an overview of agent profitability drivers and how to influence agent profitability
3. Summary and Presentations from the 6th MMU Working Group at MWC 2011
The MMU team shared the proceedings from the 6th working group held on February 16th in Barcelona during the 2011 Mobile World Congress. The event covered a number of challenges, and included interviews with experts in the field giving participants the chance to learn first-hand from others, as well as providing them with the opportunity to share their insights with MMU.
4. MMU Released Report on Driving Customer Usage of Mobile Money for the Unbanked
In March, MMU released an article on marketing mobile money. “Driving Customer Usage of Mobile Money for the Unbanked” considers the many nuances of marketing mobile money. A key theme of the article is that marketing mobile money is very different from marketing airtime. The article discusses tactics that marketers can employ when customers get stuck along this journey, such as when they have registered but fail to transact, and includes a diagnostic as a supplement to the article to help operators diagnose and rectify such issues among their potential customer base.
5. Small Business Might Be Big Business for Mobile Money
Jake Kendall from the FSP program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation discussed the potential use of mobile money by small business owners and entrepreneurs highlighting two studies which touch upon this issue: the first was a study of MTN Mobile Money users in and around Kampala done by Ali Ndiwalana, Olga Morawczynski, and Oliver Popov in 2009. The second piece was a study conducted by Lennart Bångens & Björn Söderberg who interviewed 110 MSEs in Tanzania about their usage of mobile money. The authors found that the rate of mobile money usage by business owners is much higher than national average and that many report significant benefits. The main benefit these entrepreneurs reported was increased efficiency from time saved and improved logistics.
6. The World Economic Forum launched the 2011 MFS Development Report
WEF launched the Mobile Financial Services Development Report 2011. Providing an analysis of more than 100 variables across 20 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the aim of this report was to build consensus on the drivers for realizing scale in mobile financial services and on how they should be measured. The report provided empirical support for many of the issues widely discussed on this blog such as the relative few number of countries that have achieved scale in mobile financial services, the importance of dense and well incentivized distribution networks, and factors that drive adoption other than those influenced by regulators and the private sector.
7. MMU Working Group at MMS Singapore 2011
The city of Singapore was the host of the 7th mobile money for the unbanked Working Group at the GSMA’s Mobile Money Summit. Over 100 participants from various organizations including MNOs, Banks, and donor agencies discussed the latest happenings in the field of MMU. Paul Leishman from MMU and Jennifer Barrasa, CEO of Top Image, a below-the-line field marketing agency that works with M-PESA discussed the importance of ensuring a quality customer experience at the agent level. David Porteus, Managing Director of Bankable Frontiers presented the findings from a demand side study of domestic payments in the Philippines that was designed to understand: the extent to which customers in the Philippines use mobile money, for what purposes, and why – in the context of other financial services available to them. Yasmina McCarty from MMU discussed how driving customer activation has become one of the prominent challenges facing mobile money programmes, and Salah Goss from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discussed the role of the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) Competition, a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID in incentivizing the deployment of mobile money services in Haiti.
You can be the first to comment!