Interoperability is one of the most widely discussed topics in the mobile money industry. Almost everyone has a view on the subject – and to make matters even more complicated, there are almost as many definitions of interoperability as there are opinions about it.

Today the MMU team is releasing a new article that features perhaps our longest title ever: “The case for interoperability: assessing the value that interconnection of mobile money services would create for customers and operators”. The focus of our article is domestic mobile money interconnection, by which we mean two or more mobile money providers in a single country interconnecting their respective platforms to enable a customer affiliated with one service to send money from his account to the account of a customer affiliated with another service.

In this article we attempt to answer two fundamental questions: will interoperability create value for customers? And will interoperability create value for mobile operators? In this article, we argue that the answers to these questions are not obviously ‘yes’.

You can download a copy here, and we invite you to share your comments below.