2010 Mobile World Congress: Day 1 of Mobile Money in Review

The first day of the 2010 Mobile World Congress has officially come to a close. Today was an eventful day for anyone interested in mobile money: this year, we introduced ‘ Mobile Money Monday’, an action packed day filled with presentations and panels from the likes of SMART, Telenor, Turkcell, Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, Roshan, SingTel, Axiata, as well as the Gates Foundation, CGAP and more.

Not surprisingly, the day was filled with learnings… and numbers. I’ve taken a moment to share what I thought were the seven most interesting ones:

1: New deployment launched in India. Today, Nokia Money launched in India and this will certainly be a deployment to watch.

2: The number of years that it takes for a mobile money ecosystem to make money and become sustainable, according to Cenk Sedar, Director, Vodafone.

3: The number of developing markets that Telefonica will have launched in by the end of 2010. This follows on the release last week by Trivnet of their partnership with the operator.

13: the number of minutes that it takes for a customer to report their phone stolen, according to a study conducted by Telefonica. This compares to 1-2 days for a bank card.

500,000: the number of transactions that Pakistan’s easypaisa has processed in the last four months.

3 million: the number of customers that M-PESA in Tanzania has reached.

8 million: the number of customers that M-PESA in Kenya has reached.

And finally, we couldn’t put a number on this one, but it merits sharing. According to Vodafone’s Cenk Sedar, M-PESA will process more transactions per year than Western Union by the end of 2010. Truly a reflection of their growth.

Tomorrow is the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Working Group, and I’m looking forward to the exchange of learnings. More to come throughout the week.

Click here for day two.

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