The following interview with George Held, Group Marketing Director of Zain's One Network, was originally published in the Q1 2009 MMU Quarterly Update. In the interview, George details his projections for customer adoption, the key elements of the launch strategy for Zap, and the importance of working with regulators. Since the February launch, 3,000 Zap outlets have been created across Kenya and 200,000 customers have registered for the service, which represents about 8% of Zain's subscriber base in the country.

When you put mobile money enthusiasts in a room and ask them to talk about distribution, it's only a matter of time before someone brings up Coca Cola. In the ensuing conversation, Coke is usually praised for their distribution prowess and held up as a model to which our industry should aspire. But this story is familiar to us all by now, so today I want to tell a different one. In this new story, we see Coca Cola leveraging Zain's Zap to solve a major distribution challenge in Tanzania: dealing with cash. Before addressing why cash is so painful and how Zap is helping, let's quickly review the distribution model Coke uses to get their product onto the shelves of retailers...

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.