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Mobile Money at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2010
Friday 12 February, 2010 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
Barcelona will take on a distinctly mobile flavour next week, as 50,000 people descend on the Catalan capital for GSMA Mobile World Congress. Monday will be devoted to mobile money, and our 4th MMU Working Group will take place on Tuesday.
New GSMA Case Study on Thailand’s True Money
Thursday 4 February, 2010 | Blog | East Asia and Pacific | Mobile Money | Thailand
Today, we’re publishing a case study that compares Thailand’s True Money with the industry’s best known success story, M-PESA. Launched in 2005, True Money is now used by 6 million customers.
Why and How to Engage Microfinance Institutions for your Mobile Money Deployment
Thursday 28 January, 2010 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
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.
Insights on Grameenphone’s BillPay: the Market, Model, and Agent Value Proposition
Wednesday 27 January, 2010 | Bangladesh | Blog | Mobile Money | South Asia
Recently I caught up with Azad Delwar Hossain, Head of Financial Services for Grameenphone in Bangladesh. Grameenphone launched a service called ‘BillPay’ in 2006, which allows customers to pay utility bills over the counter, or through an e-wallet.
Globe Announces Big Change to GCASH Agent Network
Tuesday 26 January, 2010 | Blog | East Asia and Pacific | Mobile Money | Philippines
Globe recently announced that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has approved their request to use Globe Telecom Sub Distributors as GCASH outlets. Building on Globe’s announcement to launch BanKO in late 2009, this announcement marks the start to what will be a busy 2010 ...
The Intersection of Mobile Money and Microfinance
Tuesday 19 January, 2010 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
Over the past three decades, microfinance has given millions of people access to financial services for the first time. As such, it’s exciting to watch how mobile money providers and microfinance institutions are starting to work together
GSMA Launches Mobile Money Deployment Tracker
Wednesday 13 January, 2010 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
Today we launched the GSMA Mobile Money Deployment Tracker. This new interactive tool has been designed to track the number of live and planned mobile money deployments targeting the unbanked segment, and present relevant data on the models and countries
Meeting the Microsavings Challenge
Friday 8 January, 2010 | Blog | Building the financial ecosystem | Global | Mobile Money
In December, we shared an article by Ignacio Mas that described how microfinance is being ‘reframed’. That is, until now microfinance has implied micro ‘funding’ of poor clients with loans, whereas many now recognize that going forward, microsavings will be a critical ...
Tameer Microfinance Bank and Telenor Provide Insights on easypaisa
Tuesday 5 January, 2010 | Blog | Mobile Money | Pakistan | South Asia
The launch of Pakistan’s ‘easypaisa’ by Telenor and Tameer Microfinance Bank was one of the most exciting deployments of 2009 - Targeting the massive unbanked segment and initially supported by a network of 2,000 agents.
Reframing Microfinance: Enabling Small Savings and Payments, Everywhere
Wednesday 9 December, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
I’m pleased to share an article recently written by Ignacio Mas, Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Revisiting RICA – The Issue of SIM Registration
Friday 4 December, 2009 | Blog | Mobile Money | South Africa | Sub-Saharan Africa
In August we reported that South Africa was revising their RICA provisions to prohibit mobile network operators from registering new SIM cards without first capturing the customer’s identity.
A Closer Look at ‘Splash’ in Sierra Leone
Monday 30 November, 2009 | Blog | Mobile Money | Sierra Leone | Sub-Saharan Africa
I recently had a conversation with Ben Farren, Director of Splash Mobile Money Ltd., to learn how Sierra Leone’s first mobile money deployment has been progressing since it launched 10 weeks ago.
Managing the Active Rate: Solutions to 3 Common Challenges
Wednesday 25 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
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.
A Further USD$2 Million Awarded to Six New Grant Recipients of the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Programme
Wednesday 18 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
The Mobile Money for the Unbanked Programme has awarded grants to AKTEL in Bangladesh, Dialog Telekom PLC in Sri Lanka, Grameenphone Ltd in Bangladesh, MTN Cameroon, MTN Uganda and Vodacom Tanzania. This is in addition to the grants that were already announced
Tactics for Tipping Markets: Influence Perceptions and Expectations
Sunday 15 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
How can operators influence the perception of the size of their network? Well for one thing, they can share their customer adoption numbers, assuming they are good. Safaricom made regular announcements in the two years after M-PESA’s launch, and these updates were widely ...
Tactics for Tipping Markets: Market Segmentation
Thursday 12 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
My last couple of posts might have been a bit discouraging, particularly if you’re trying to roll out mobile money. The idea of deferring profitability for years, in the hope that you’ll sign up enough users to become a sufficiently valuable network to justify price ...
Tactics for Tipping Markets: Subsidize Early Adopters
Wednesday 11 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
In my last post, I said that network effects are apparent when the users of a given network care about how many other users are in the same network.
Understanding (and Exploiting) Network Effects in Mobile Money
Tuesday 10 November, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
It’s often said that mobile money is a brand new business model. Neither traditional value-added services offered by mobile network operators nor financial services offered by bricks-and mortar-banks are very helpful as models when trying to think through the economics of ...
Mobile Money in the Philippines – The Market, The Models and Regulation
Wednesday 4 November, 2009 | Blog | East Asia and Pacific | Mobile Money | Philippines | Policy and regulation
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.
Belgacom ICS and RBS MOU: What it Means for Mobile Operators
Thursday 29 October, 2009 | Blog | Global | Mobile Money
This week Belgacom ICS and RBS announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding for the facilitation of foreign currency exchange for mobile remittances.