For some time, mobile money news has been dominated by activity in Africa: announcements by group operators with a presence in the region such as MTN, Vodafone, Zain, Orange and Orascom have been hogging the international headlines. The notable exceptions to this have been reports on pioneering mobile money deployments from the Philippines – SMART and Globe – who have been growing from strength to strength and have been the key operators within the whole of the Asian continent. The Mobile Money for the Unbanked team has been keen to find out more about what is happening elsewhere in Asia, or at least what the feeling was towards mobile money across the Asian continent.
I have spent the last few days at the GSMA Asia Pacific Conference, which took place in Shanghai, China. This event is run by a committee of operators who set the agenda, invite speakers and host the event. The Conference attracts over 300 attendees with strong operator representation from across the region. For the first time at this event, which has been traditionally focused on roaming and interconnectivity issues, approximately a third of the agenda was dedicated to mobile money. This is a strong indication that operator interest in this subject is starting to rise in the region.
At this event, I met operators who were able to tell me about their deployments in Thailand, Malaysia, China and Indonesia. There were also operators from countries such as Fiji, Nepal, Cambodia and Mongolia who also interested in mobile money. Here are a few key highlights from this event:
Operator in Thailand is using RFID technology for mobile money payments
True Money launched in Thailand three years ago, and is available to banked and unbanked customers. Customers can either link their bank account to their True Money account, or they can buy scratch cards to load money onto their phones (however, a cash out service is currently not permitted by the regulators). True Money customers can pay bills and purchase airtime via their phone, and they can also pay for goods and services in retail outlets by using an RFID device that sits next to their SIM card (which is called Touch SIM). I haven’t yet heard of such technology being used in any other country – Thailand seems to be the first. True Money currently claims about 5.6 million users of its e-Wallet service. The number is rising by about 100,000 new users every month and the company is aiming to reach 10 million users by the end of this year.
Operators are launching mobile money with both domestic and international remittance options
Telkomsel in Indonesia and Celcom in Malaysia have both recently launched mobile money services and international remittance has been a key component of their business model from launch. There are large international migrant communities across Asia who need to send money home across borders – and mobile technology is being embraced to meet this need.
No country is too big or too small for there to be consumer needs for mobile money
I spoke to operators from countries as large as China and as small as Fiji, all of whom saw mobile money as being a key commercial opportunity for them going forward
The key themes that were raised by operators in discussions about mobile money focused heavily on regulation and security (particularly around pros and cons of USSD versus SMS) – so these are clearly concerns and questions that are being raised more globally by operators. In addition to the key themes being similar, I was struck also by how keen operators across the region were to share knowledge and information about their deployments, so I hope that we shall be reporting more from these other countries in the near future.
Feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives on additional mobile money activity in Asia by posting a comment below.