The GSMA Mobile Money Summit concluded moments ago in Barcelona. The 2-day event was filled with presentations designed to help attendees understand and execute on the mobile money opportunity. In the closing session, several people noted the contrast between last year’s event in Cairo, which was characterized by a focus on understanding the potential of the market opportunity, and this year’s event which focused on how to execute. I jotted down a few figures on my BlackBerry which I found to be particularly interesting – I’ve listed them below.

364 million. In his opening remarks, Gavin Krugel noted this figure, which represents the projected number of currently unbanked customers living in developing markets that will adopt mobile money by 2012. This projection emerged from the CGAP-GSMA Mobile Money Market Sizing exercise conducted in early 2009.

4.5 million. This is the number of SIMs in market that are ‘Zap enabled’, a figure announced in Tuesday’s keynote address delivered by Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain Africa.

40%. This is the percent of Kenyan households that have used M-PESA as of late 2008, a figure announced by Caroline Pulver of FSD Kenya as she unveiled the findings of their survey.

41%. This is the number of Filipino mobile money users who were able to set up a mobile money account in 5 minutes or less. I announced this figure in the MMU Working Group.

1%. Tim Attinger of Visa presented VISA’s mobile money strategy and cited a statistic that electronic payments deliver cost savings of at least 1% of a country’s GDP (when compared to paper).

20%. Bob Christen of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (who have provided funding for MMU) noted this figure as the amount that money saved by the unbanked using informal approaches degrades by each year. This is very helpful context for understanding the decisions that unbanked people make as part of their complex financial lives.

10. This is the lowest top-up value in terms of Rupees available to Indian mobile users. The success that mobile operators have had in targeting base of pyramid customers by offering low value top-up options will be important to remember as they now seek to offer mobile money.

$1,400,000. This is the amount of money that the MMU Fund has allocated to projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Please share the figures or learnings from the Mobile Money Summit that resonated with you.