The MMU team is pleased to share the proceedings from our last working group held on June 27th in Singapore. We have attached the presentations and descriptions from the various sessions and will be posting some videos over the next couple of weeks.
Session 1. Introduction. Seema Desai, Director of MMU
The MMU Programme is running at full speed; this session offers an overview of what the programme has accomplished to date and what our plans are going forward.
Session 2. Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents. Paul Leishman, Manager, MMU and Guest panellist, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of Top Image
In this session we explore the role that Top Image, a below-the-line field marketing agency, has played in developing and maintaining Safaricom’s successful M-PESA agent network. Top Image performs several key functions, including training M-PESA agents, monitoring float, and supervising activations. In this session, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of Top Image discusses the role Top Image plays and how it is strategically important.
Session 3. Consumer Insights from the Philippines. David Porteous, Director, Bankable Frontier Associates
The Philippines is known around the world as the market in which the first mobile money services, SMART Money and GCASH, were launched. In this session, David Porteous presents the findings from a recent demand-side study of domestic payments in the Philippines that was designed to understand the extent to which customers in the Philippines use mobile money, for what purposes, and why – in the context of other financial services available to them.
Session 4. Customer Activation. Yasmina McCarty, Manager, MMU
Driving customer activation has become one of the prominent challenges facing mobile money programmes. In this session, we will discuss the key challenges that operators have faced when it comes to activating customers for mobile money. Specifically we will look at the case of MTN Uganda and the barriers they have identified which keep customers from activating for mobile money.
Session 5. Mobile Money in Haiti. Salah Goss, Associate Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
On January 12th, 2010, the earthquake that struck Haiti impacted not just its infrastructure, but the livelihoods and access to essential services of its population. It was in that context, that Digicel and Voila, the two leading mobile network operators in the country announced last September their intention to enter the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) Competition, a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. In this session, Salah Goss will discuss the role of the HMMI challenge fund in incentivizing the deployment of mobile money services, in addition to some of the lessons and challenges faced by the MNOs in the country.