MVola, a digital bank licensed to provide mobile money and digital retail banking in Madagascar, offers access to simple, immediate and secure financial services. With over 10 million customers, MVola has an evenly spread network of agents across the country to support users with their needs. However, to become a financial service provider and lifestyle solution of choice, MVola has adopted a digital-first strategy to grow the uptake and use of its services among new and existing customers.
As part of this, MVola has embraced open platforms to allow partners to offer innovative solutions and services to customers that ideally complement its own core mobile money use cases. This includes the MVola Developer’s Portal for direct merchant integrations, MVola Wallet to Bank and QR Code payment. The company can do this by allowing developers to access its application programming interfaces (APIs). This approach has not only expanded MVola’s service portfolio but has also allowed third-party developers to monetise their products.
Open platforms are the cornerstone of financial services innovation, enabling companies to collaborate, integrate and build on existing technologies to ultimately enhance services. Industry-wide harmonisation efforts, such as the GSMA Mobile Money API, are necessary to promote interoperability and streamline operations. Adhering to open API standards aligns with MVola’s aim of providing financial services that meet the highest global standards. To achieve this, MVola complied with the GSMA Mobile Money API specification in September 2023.
The GSMA Mobile Money API is organised around eight use cases. MVola plans to comply with all of them. In the first phase, MVola complied with the use cases for transfers, namely person-to-person transfers and international remittances. This involved several steps:
- Adapting MVola’s current mobile money API offering to support the GSMA Mobile Money API specification for the new use cases;
- Assessing the existing infrastructure to support demand from the adoption of the two new use cases by third-party developers;
- Ensuring data security and privacy measures are based on the GSMA Mobile Money API security guidelines;
- Aligning systems with the GSMA Mobile Money API specifications to ensure seamless integration and operational consistency.
Although the process required a significant amount of investment and effort, the benefits could potentially be substantial: being compliant with the GSMA Mobile Money API now allows MVola to swiftly onboard new partners to innovate and provide complementary services to customers. This has streamlined collaboration with a range of stakeholders (such as banks, merchants, and fintech companies) and expanded their product offerings. For instance, in October 2023, MVola signed a partnership with MFS Africa, a significant remittance provider in Africa, to enhance its international remittance service. Ultimately, initiatives like this will enable MVola to attract new customers.
Compliance has also led to the convergence of new services within the MVola ecosystem through its super-app. Through the super-app, customers can access a range of financial services, such as P2P transfers, international remittances, bill payments and access to loans. Customers’ ability to make domestic and international transfers can be attributed to MVola’s compliance with the GSMA Mobile Money API specifications. By expanding its mobile money payment networks, MVola has enabled more cross-border commerce, as well as greater financial inclusion in Madagascar.
As part of the package, the GSMA Mobile Money API Compliance Verification Service helps mobile money providers to follow industry best practices on design and security. This service awards a “GSMA Mobile Money API Compliant” mark to API providers such as MVola that comply with the specification. MVola and any other compliant API providers can benefit from increased trust in their solutions, making it easier to attract third-party service providers to their platform. The mark demonstrates adherence to best practices in flexibility, scalability, and security.
Click here to learn more about the GSMA’s Mobile Money API specifications. To learn more about the latest mobile money developments, sign up here for the launch of the GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2025.