By:
Paul Leishman: November 25th, 2009
Whenever a mobile money deployment announces customer numbers, the first question people typically ask is ‘yes, but how many of those customers are active’? It’s a fair question. Active user rates vary across deployments and have an enormous impact on profitability. Analysis of different markets has revealed three broad challenges that deployments face when it comes to active rates. The first two challenges involve persuading customers to perform an acceptable number of transactions. If these challenges aren’t quickly and adequately addressed, they spawn a third, equally troublesome challenge: out of practice, unsatisfied agents.
So how are deployments addressing these challenges?
By:
Paul Leishman: November 4th, 2009
The following case study offers a comprehensive view into the regulation, service, and ecosystem design that has led to the current state of play for mobile money in the Philippines. To be sure, the market is one of the most advanced in the world, but in recent months the limelight has gone mostly to the runaway hit that is M-PESA.
Mobile money success has materialized in the Philippines - but compared with Kenya it’s come more gradually and to a more measured degree. We won’t compare the two markets in this case study, but one point worth highlighting is the different approaches taken in each market to building a distribution network….
By:
Seema Desai: September 17th, 2009
The GSMA is providing grants to operators in order to accelerate mobile money deployments around the world. Today, we are able to announce the first four of these operators who will receive grants; these are AXIS in Indonesia, Oi Paggo in Brazil, Roshan in Afghanistan and SMART Communications in the Philippines.
Details on each grant provided below.
By:
Paul Leishman: September 4th, 2009
In mobile money, we spend a lot of time talking about innovative ways to deliver financial services to the unbanked poor in spite of their income, geographic and trust barriers to banking. But what about serving the banked? This post explores three ways that leading mobile money deployments use technology to serve the banked and/or those who are key sources of funds, including:
- Automating the cash-in step (video of SMART auto-reloader)
- Integrating with bank accounts
- Offering ATM access
By:
Paul Leishman: August 27th, 2009
The following is a partial transcript of a panel discussion held at the Mobile Money Summit in June 2009 featuring Jojo Malolos of SMART Money and Rizza Maniego from G-Xchange. Jojo and Rizza address timely issues surrounding mobile money, including:
- Their approaches used to understand the customer
- Approaches used to drive adoption
- Perspectives on interoperability
By:
Paul Leishman: July 10th, 2009
In keeping with the theme established at the Barcelona MMU working group of ‘understanding the mobile money customer’, I’ve posted some suggested reading and viewing material.
1. Portfolios of the Poor
For those looking for more data-driven findings like the ones presented at the working group, this book will be a valuable resource.
2. Use of G-Cash in Cantilan, Philippines
This video profiles use of G-Cash in Cantilan, a Filipino farming and fishing community 5 hours away from the nearest operational airport. The video features interviews with customers (there are 8,900 in Cantilan) and agents from a few of the 60+ small businesses, including pharmacies, bakeries, restaurants, who accept G-Cash as a payment method.
3. Microfinance: From Manual to Mobile Enabled (SMART)
This video provides a glimpse into the role that mobile money can play in microfinance loan disbursement and cash collection.
By:
Paul Leishman: June 18th, 2009
This is the second post in our series on customer adoption leading up to the Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona. The previous post introduced the importance of driving service awareness and understanding as enablers of adoption. This post addresses the importance of ‘driving demand’, which is the second step in the adoption framework that will be presented at the MMU working group and in the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Annual Report. Specifically, we will focus on one key element - the importance of positioning mobile money so that the unbanked perceive it to be a ‘service for people like me’.
By:
Paul Leishman: June 17th, 2009
Leading up to the Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona next week, I will be writing a series of posts on ‘adoption drivers’ that have emerged from the CGAP-GSMA Mobile Money Market Sizing Study. These drivers are part of an adoption framework that will be expanded on during my presentation at the MMU working group, and in the 2009 Mobile Money for the Unbanked Annual Report. The first post in this series examines two metrics that can be considered as basic enablers of mobile money adoption – service awareness and understanding.
