The MMU team is pleased to share the proceedings from our last working group held on February 16th in Barcelona during the 2011 Mobile World Congress. We have attached the presentations and highlights from the various sessions.

In addition, we will be posting some videos from the sessions in the coming weeks.

1. “Mobile money at the Cross Roads”

There has been more and more focus on financial inclusion and on regulation (i.e. in the G20 discussions) in the last year. In this context, the role of mobile money and its regulatory treatment are heavily debated. In this session, Claire Alexandre, Senior Programme Officer at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Marina Solin, Regulatory Director at MMU , discussed priority issues such as enabling easy registration for financial inclusion and allowing non banks to offer mobile money services.

2.Marketing Mobile Money: What Works, and What Doesn’t?

Driving customer activation has become one of the prominent challenges facing mobile money programmes. In fact, marketing mobile money has proven very different from marketing airtime or any other value added service. In this session, Yasmina McCarty, Manager, MMU and Roar Bjaerum, Vice President Financial Services, Telenor Pakistan discussed the key challenges that operators have faced when it comes to activating customers for mobile money. The panelists stated that demonstrating a specific use case of mobile money for a specific target market has proven to be the most compelling marketing. In addition, they discussed the critical steps before a consumer becomes comfortable with mobile money highlighting the importance of a bespoke marketing mix required for success.

3. Is There Money in Mobile Money?

As mobile money services continue to launch and scale around the world, it’s become increasingly important to understand the drivers – and extent – of value being created. In this session, Paul Leishman from MMU presented the results of the profitability study conducted by GSMA.

4. Forging Effective Relationships with Banks

Every mobile operator needs a bank to offer mobile financial services. But the operator-bank relationship is often a source of tension. In this sessionNeil Davidson from MMU and Greg Reeve, Head of Mobile Payment Systems, Vodafone reviewed not only the assets and capabilities that operators and banks bring to mobile money, but also highlighted the diversity of operator-bank deals that currently exist. The panel highlighted the fact that it can be sometimes hard to predict what commercial terms will result in a long-term “win-win” deal, therefore parties should strive to build in opportunities to revisit commercial terms over time.

5. Mobile Money Interoperability

In this final presentation, Ignacio Mas, Senior Advisor at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation discussed mobile money interoperating and how operators can work together to add most value to users. Ignacio shed some light onto the ways that operators could interconnect their platforms, to create any-to-any payment possibilities for their end-users.