After the first day was dedicated to the progresses made under the Maya declaration, the second day of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) Global Policy Forum (GPF) provided the opportunity to explore different approaches to specific policy and regulatory issues. Financial education, new business models, microinsurance, and financial inclusion strategies were the issues debated in the sessions.

I was invited to join the panel on how to break the barriers that are impeding mobile financial services to make financial inclusion real. AFI members from Mexico, Pakistan, and Ghana were on stage with me, as well as one representative of MasterCard. We ended up spending all the session talking about interoperability in the form of enabling e-money to flow between wallets of different mobile money providers. The position of the GSMA was perfectly in line with those of the Mexican and Pakistani regulators. Today the key takeaways of that panel are on the first page of the GPFconnect, the magazine that is distributed every morning to all participants with the news and the views from the 2012 GPF. They are:

1. Interoperability is a means to an end. Financial inclusion should be a key focus rather than interoperability itself. Although it is a tool that can contribute to financial inclusion in certain circumstances, it does not guarantee it.

2. Interoperability must make business sense. Regulators need to be cautious about intervening and ask whether they are creating risks and extra costs for service providers by launching products and services in a market that is not ready to support them. Without a strong regulatory framework and customer confidence in the security of the system, interoperability will not succeed.

3. Timing is everything. There is no question that we need interoperability – the question is when and how. The maturity of the market must be taken into account and data and information need to be gathered that reveal the right time and the right source to launch services.

MMU released a position paper on interoperability early this year. Another contribution to the discussion of interoperability will be published in October in the MMU 2012 Progress Report.

In October during the MMU Leadership Forum we will have one session on this topic, with both operators and regulators among our guests speakers.