Mobile Money Africa

Arnaud Chevalier – Director of New Domains and Technical Sales, Kabira

Q: Could you provide a brief overview of your organization and your role and responsibilities in it?

A: Kabira Technologies, has been providing software infrastructure solutions to communication service providers since 1998. During this time, Kabira has successfully implemented solutions for more than 100 customers in over 40 countries including AT&T, Orange, Hutchison 3G, Visa, and Hitachi.. Kabira has also built a significant footprint in Africa with implementations in more than 15 countries, from Morocco to Botswana and from Egypt to Senegal. This includes major operators like Orange affiliates, Maroc Telecom or Mobinil. Those customers run some of their most mission-critical applications on our solutions. Because of this, Kabira designs its solutions to deliver the highest levels of reliability and total customer. Our mobile payments solution, the Kabira Mobile Transaction Hub™ (KMTH) is built upon Kabira’s market-leading transaction processing platform and enables operators to create innovative and differentiated mobile payment services.
KMTH is an open and flexible mobile transaction processing platform that allows mobile network operators, service providers and financial institutions to deliver, mobile airtime and money services, from airtime recharges up to remittances services or utilities bill payments – nationwide or between different countries.
As Director of New Domains and Technical Sales for Kabira, it is my responsibility to for driving strategic discussions with leading prospects and customers to anticipate the future of the Telecommunications industry’s products and services, and for turning these into new product offerings for Kabira.

Q: Your company is currently providing services for several countries in Africa and has been an active participant in our telecommunications market. What trends do you believe will be growing in the coming year?

This is a timely question right now. Kabira recently exhibited at AfricaCom 2009 and we heard directly from many people that broadband is projected to take off in 2010, particularly with fiber deployments in major urban areas. We heard that this will be one of the biggest growth drivers for operators in this region. Also, WiMAX will grow, both for mobility’s sake as well as an alternative for broadband coverage.
Those trends are paving the way for launching aggressive mobile web offerings. A heavy prepaid context is going to be a key factor that operators must consider when they design their lower-end packages of targeted service offerings: implementing smart policy and charging adapted to your market will help to drive consumer adoption of mobile data services in the very near future – an area where Kabira can bring also immediate value for African operators.

Q: And did you hear of any significant trends dealing specifically with mobile money in Africa?

Of course! Mobile Money is – again – the hottest topic for the African telecom market with a lot of discussion around M-PESA. This is true not only for countries like Kenya, but also for even bigger countries like Tanzania. And, although it took more time in Tanzania than it did in Kenya to get started, mobile money applications are now really beginning to take off. Of course, understanding how the potential success for different services varies given local contexts, is clearly “a requirement” for implementing service packages and operators must understand that a number of key factors go into determining this potential for success. Specifically, factors such as the policy for agents to manage their fleet of mobile resellers and the effects of local regulatory impacts to drive registration for those particular services are issues that must be addressed.
Last, but by far not least, we feel that cross-border remittance will not only be an important application for inclusion in the mobile money service suite, it is a “must-have.” We have heard from several sources that rather than supporting numerous varied financial services, the key to having a successful mobile money business is in having a large set of corridors and touch-points available to support migrants in developing countries.

Q: Can you touch on what all these trends mean to your company, Kabira Technologies?

This is very exciting for us because the trends we heard about at AfricaCom validate both Kabira’s product approach and the partnerships we are building to support this region. We are very much looking forward to actively participate in all these initiatives in Africa throughout next year and beyond.

Q: We have heard that interest in your technology is growing very rapidly right now because it has demonstrated that it can play an extremely important role in helping operators in Africa. Can you describe how your technology would do this?

What Kabira’s mobile payments solutions do is enable a pragmatic and agile approach for operators to address the emerging and fast-evolving mobile payments market. Operators who implement Kabira solutions are able to rely on a highly available mobile payments platform that is proven to scale to extremely large volumes of mission-critical transactions on standard commodity hardware. Having such a platform allows these operators to anticipate future growth, and be assured they can successfully support that growth – flexibly and cost-efficiently. By adopting a leading-edge infrastructure platform approach with Kabira, operators could be able to grow their business through such activities as:
• Supporting an aggressive agents’ recruitment plan because they are now able to employ a feature-rich and flexible commissioning configuration. This allows them to attract and manage new agents much more efficiently.
• Facilitating user adoption with configurable promotions patterns and local adaptation to preferred channels (SMS, USSD, STK …)
• Ensuring compliance to specific regulations
More than simply a set of solutions addressing key functional and operational aspects of mobile money, KMTH is also a framework that enables our customers to innovate and support an aggressive services roadmap.
And, with Kabira, they can do all of this in a manner that limits their delivery risks since their solution is built on a platform and with an organization with a very long track-record of secure, successful, highly available and reliable deployments for over 10 years, supporting some of the largest operators in the world.

Q: Can you share an example of how you have implemented this for an operator in Africa?

Let me describe what we are doing for an operator with presence across multiple countries in Africa. The main objective of our customer was to acquire one unique payment gateway platform, able to handle all types of payment transactions such as airtime purchase, e-money transfers, or international money remittance. A major, primary focus was on initial use cases with a proven return on investment so as to justify the investment in this new software infrastructure. Obviously, key characteristics for this software platform were reliability, scalability, flexibility and the ability to evolve easily.
With Kabira’s long history of expertise and experience in both the telecommunications and payments markets, we were able to propose a platform solution with the strict levels of security and reliability required for mobile payments transactions. Additionally, the Kabira solution enabled our customer to have an iterative approach for the deployment of their payment services ? leveraging each project phase, always building the services portfolio at an increasing pace. On top of that, we could show that we would be deploying platforms for this operator which have been “field-proven” across multiple geographies, and supporting huge subscriber-bases. This assured the operator that the Kabira solution could easily handle the levels of traffic produced by Africa’s most densely populated countries.
By working with this operator to take an infrastructure-based solution, the operator understood that it would be able to obtain the speed and reliability they need for their mobile payments / mobile money transactions, while at the same time increasing their potential to improve their margin.

Q: And with regards to remittances, what is Kabira’s vision?

International Money Transfers represent a huge potential for African operators – and they know it. Our belief is that for capturing a significant market share and value out of the remittance flows, Operators will need to propose as fast as possible a simple and immediate access, not to one, not to three but to tens of countries, from neighborhood to developed countries. Interoperability, interconnectivity and settlement facilities are key features to bring to Operators, and that is why Kabira is focusing its efforts in this domain to build the true hub that will bring that promise to the market.

Q: Thank you for this wonderful information for our readers. Can you tell us how to get in touch with someone at Kabira if they want to know more?

Certainly. To find out more about Kabira and our mobile money solutions, you can visit our website at www.kabira.com. To learn more about what we can do for telecommunications service providers in Africa, please send an email message to info@kabira.com with your contact information and our Africa sales team will get back in touch with you.

Thank you.

“Arnaud Chevalier is Director of New Domains and Technical Sales is one of Kabira’s leading experts on service delivery systems for wireless and wireline broadband networks. Arnaud joined Kabira in 2000 and has been instrumental in helping Kabira’s team win critical projects in the service aware, fulfillment and mobile payments domains with major Telco operators. Arnaud’s engineering background brings him a wealth of telecommunications experience. He holds a Physicist Engineer Diploma from Ecole Supérieure de Physique & Chimie Industrielles in Paris, France, as well as a DEA graduate from Telecom ParisTech (ENST), France.”

Alan Cowley, Sybase CEO.

The emergence and explosive adoption of converged devices like smart phones has led to an era of the “mobilized workplace” where staff at various levels throughout an organization doesn’t necessarily need to be in the office to effectively fulfil all their daily responsibilities to the business. Because a mobilized workforce requires staff to consistently access sensitive corporate information from various sources within the company, enterprise mobile device security has become a strategic business imperative, whether organisations realize this yet or not.

Although there’s an increase in the use of lock codes to protect laptops, cell-phones and various other mobile devices to safeguard company information on these converged devices, these precautionary measures are often not enough.

According to Alan Cowley, CEO of Sybase SA, the business value of securing corporate information mobilization is worth as much as the information you are trying to protect.

The individual addiction to mobilizing just about everything has created a perilous gap in securing company information. Executives who use smart phones are blissfully unaware of their increasing vulnerability in the face of a complete lack of or minimized security on their devices.

When mobile phones are lost or stolen, executives are never fully aware of the extent of the loss in terms of the value of the sensitive information – both personal and company – that resided on that phone. Today, the amount of information historically reserved exclusively for desktop computers or laptops is equivalent to the amount and kinds of information kept on a smart phone.

“We need to regard mobile phones as computers that are smaller in size only. What’s worse is that unlike computers, we take our mobile devices with us everywhere we go – Home, when travelling, on holiday, to the workplace and everywhere in between”, says Alan Cowley, CEO of Sybase SA.

“Historically there has never been a single resource driving IT security but this is changing rapidly and IT security strategies with dedicated custodians are being deloyed. It is paramount that these strategies and resources make consideration for access to information via mobile devices”, adds Cowley.

A lot can be learnt about a business just by accessing the CEO’s mobile phone, from company financials, deal negotiation details, employee records, pipeline, forecasts, company strategy, bank account details, photos, etc; the list is endless.

When a mobile phone/device is stolen, the owner usually has two primary concerns: loss of personal access and the prevention of third party access to the information stored on the device. Without effective mobile device security, the consequence of the latter can never be measured or mitigated because when a mobile phone is stolen, the owner is no longer in control of the stored information and how it will be used

The only way for businesses to mitigate the risk of associated threats is to invest in effective mobile device security. Legislation will soon be introduced which will stipulate that IT must include access to information via mobile phones in its security considerations….Why wait until you’ve been a target to do something about it?

Globacom Limited a leading telecommunication company, Since it launched its services on August 29, 2003, has been at the forefront of revolutionary changes in the GSM sector in Africa.
Globacom offer various services in ICT and Telecom sector in Africa like GPRS-based service, 3G Technology, Broadband Internet Services, Mobile Internet, Tracking System, GSM Services, etc

Globacom Limited is seeking to hire high flying professionals in marketing to fill the following vacant position in West Africa.

Position: Business Development Manager Mobile Money Transfer

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER MOBILE MONEY TRANSFER

Job Profile:
• Articulate a business plan, pricing model and other features of the Mobile Money Transfer service
• Develop agent partnership business models and work closely with the channels/sales team
• Steer the communication and branding build up and ensure high visibility of the Mobile Money Transfer Service across Nigeria.

Required Experience:
• 4-5 years of relevant experience in Product Management/Money Transfer Marketing in a telecom/ Financial Service

Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree in Business Management, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or any other relevant disciplines.
• Possession of post qualification degree in business management will be added advantage

Additional skills:
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Strong Interpersonal skills
• Excellent negotiation skills
• Proficiency in the use of Microsoft Excel and SQL/Microsoft Access
• Knowledge of BI Tools is required for Head Analytic and Research

Method of Application:
Qualified candidates should e-mail their resume with a passport photograph if possible (quoting the relevant references for the Vacancy to: marketing.job@gloworld.com
Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Application Deadline is 15th December, 2009.

Obopay, a leading mobile banking and payment provider, today announced it has been chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer 2010 for its innovation, transformational technology, leadership and substantial long-term impact on businesses and society. Obopay is one of 26 companies from around the world to be honored with this prestigious award. In addition, Obopay is one of only 11 companies in the Information Technologies, Telecommunications and New Media category and is the only financial services provider receiving the award. The award will be presented to Obopay at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January. This award underscores the company’s vision and corporate commitment to empowering all people with access to affordable banking.

Obopay’s service allows everyone with a mobile phone to have access to banking – even people who have been underserved by traditional banking. Half of the world population is un-banked and without access to savings, credit or electronic payments. Obopay’s mobile technology is the platform that is making a breakthrough by delivering unprecedented and innovative access to basic financial services to billions globally.

With services in both emerging and developed markets, Obopay is committed to delivering mobile banking and payments to all people in the way that best meets their needs regardless of geography through all operators, carriers, financial institutions, mobile handsets and merchants. With its low cost business model, Obopay enables affordable financial services through mobile communications and through its global partners including Nokia and MasterCard, Obopay is able to extend its reach to the people and businesses that need it the most.

“Being recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer is an incredible honor and a testament to the pioneering spirit that drives this company, as well as our relentless focus to bring universal access to financial services through mobile phones,” commented Carol Realini, chief executive officer and founder of Obopay. “Mobile Money creates a breakthrough in banking and we at Obopay are proud to be at the forefront of this revolution by fundamentally transforming the global banking industry, empowering people’s lives and changing the way businesses transact.”

Mpesa

MICHAEL KARANJA

Kenya Airways passengers on local routes will now be able to pay for their air tickets via Safaricom’s money transfer service, M-PESA.

This comes after the two companies partnered on Thursday to offer customers a ticket payment solution.

Speaking during the signing ceremony, Kenya Airways Commercial Director Mohan Chandra said the service is aimed at enhancing customer experience with the national carrier by giving them the opportunity to buy tickets at their convenience.

“Our customers will now be able to pay for their flights via M-PESA by simply dialing our call centre or logging onto our website,” Mr Chandra explained.

The new service builds on an earlier agreement between the listed telecoms firm and three local airlines – East African Safari Air, Air Kenya and Aircraft Leasing Services that enables air travelers book their tickets from their mobile phones and pay through M-PESA.

Safaricom Chief Executive Michael Joseph said the partnership was in line with the company’s strategy of increasing data usage and application for customer convenience as it diversifies its revenue base.

“With this new service we hope to increase our data subscriber numbers by offering our customers innovative services,” Mr Joseph said.

The service is currently available to passengers plying domestic routes and selected regions in East Africa.

Locally, KQ flies to Kisumu, Nairobi, and Mombasa while the new service could be used to purchase tickets to Entebbe, Dar-es-Salaam, Kigali, and Bujumbura.

Mr Joseph said this was due to M-PESA’s limitations which has a maximum transaction cap of Sh35,000.

“Unfortunately with Safaricom’s limits you can pay for domestic or regional tickets only,” he said.

He was however optimistic that they could work on the money transfer system, allowing it to recognise transactions above the current maximum of Sh35,000.

“In the near future we would hope that passengers would be able to purchase tickets to destinations such as London when we change the limit,” he stressed.

There also plans to link the web portals of both companies, to give customers choice to conduct their transactions.

When customers call to make a reservation which costs less than or equal to Sh35,000 inclusive of all taxes, they are given the M-PESA payment option which if they agree will be given the booking reference number, ticket value in Kenya Shillings inclusive of taxes and the business number via SMS.

Customers will then use the booking reference number to make payment through M-PESA using the business number 777777 and thereafter get a KQ confirmation receipt of payment in the web portal provided by Safaricom.

KQ will then send an SMS with a valid ticket number and an e-ticket.

Africa is leading the world in Mobile commerce and payment with active deployments all across the continent. M-PESA is now referred to as the most successful of all with more than 7 million subscribers in Kenya alone. Many look alike deployments are either in active roll outs or in the offing.

Though mobile money is generally known as the play turf of mobile operators but financial institution are also seeking for a piece of the cake that will enable them bank the unbanked and reach millions of Africans that are currently left behind.

As the landscape gets interesting with strong compelling needs for mobile payment technologist, agency developers, third party Banking agents, support services and consultants to support the evolving ecosystem, there is need to develop a skill pool and talent Bank that will position the industry on a proper footing.

Despite the urgent need to bring formal financial services to millions across Africa where millions are still excluded from any form of formal financial inclusion, the main challenge of how Mobile money works and the value creation that it adds to the overall strategy of the provider, Banks and mobile operators. The industry is still faced with critical manpower shortages. The governments are still trying to tackle regulation, Banks battling understanding low value, volume transaction platforms while mobile operators are untying the risk involved in managing deposits which they are not used to.

The presence of the challenges is now creating a new pool of corporate mercenaries which specializes in hijacking new industries with the short term aim of instant benefits against industry experts with the deep knowledge that can sustain long term vision of the organizations. Corporate mercenaries are promoting all sorts of technologies and solutions which cannot be sustained and does not deliver strong value realization even if it meets short term objectives of the banks. Mismatches at the early stages can set the stage for a future failure and Africa cannot afford not to properly position Mobile money as it holds the key to meeting many of the millennium development goals and targets.

Financial institutions are prone to such mis-hires at the early stages. Some Banks are actually deploying technology which are not compatible with more than 30 percent of their total target mobile subscribers based on some expert mercenary advise which will ultimately ruin the project in the long run.

Industry experts are still few in the industry but their efforts are contributing positively all across Africa and they have deep insights across all the sectors to make change happen. Africa will need to tap into her reservoir of talents all around the world and also groom new hands to sustain this rapid growing industry that holds so much promises for Africa.

Lastly, mobile operators and Banks should collaborate further to develop mobilemoney academies to serve their markets and grow the industry together. Lessons are to be learnt from the Orange Money Academy in Mali. We cannot afford to lose out on this last chance opportunity.

Emmanuel Okoegwale
Editor – MobileMoneyAfrica

Register for PostBanking and Mobile Money Training,Nigeria – http://mobilemoneyafrica.com/archives/1268

The Reserve Bank of India, after attempting to increase the reach of the banking ecosystem by allowing PCOs and grocery shops to offer banking services, has now framed new directions for all banks and some e-commerce and m-commerce providers under Section 18 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. The rules are aimed at increasing accountability and reducing delays in transferring money between the participants of the ecosystem – consumers, providers of e-commerce and m-commerce applications and services and the merchants who accept payment through online and mobile media.

Which Providers Are Affected?

Those e-commerce an m-commerce providers that create a float and hold onto amounts deposited by the users for unknown periods of time before the next transaction are the ones targeted by RBI. The reason is that these funds can be used for overnight investments by the company.

Those that perform real-time payments, and whose process for digital payments flow like a pipe directly from the consumer’s bank account through their application or service and to the merchants without delays are excluded from the guidelines.

The guidelines say, “all entities that collect monies received from customers for payment to merchants using any electronic/online payment mode, for goods and services availed by them and subsequently facilitate the transfer of these monies to the merchants in final settlement of the obligations of the paying customers.”

Pre-paid instrument providers and companies that create an independent account for the user and subsequently allow the user to pay bills and make transactions for e-commerce and m-commerce needs to which the user subscribes are those which will be affected by this rule. These could include: Atom Technologies, mChek, ItzCash Card, Obopay, NGPay by JiGraahak Mobility Solutions, Oxigen, etc.

ItzCash Card, for example, offers four pre-paid cards that can be used to purchase tickets, book a hotel room, pay for insurance, settle bills etc off 5000 merchants in 1800 towns and cities. This follows RBI’s definition of companies with processes wherein “the payments made by customers (for settlement of e-commerce/m-commerce/bill payment transactions), are credited to the accounts of these intermediaries, before the funds are transferred to the accounts of the merchants in final settlement of the obligations of the paying customers.”

RBI has stated that direct e-commerce and m-commerce providers such as online travel sites Yatra.com, Makemytrip.com, IRCTC etc, online shopping sites Futurebazaar.com, Indiatimes Shopping etc, cinema booking sites PVRcinemas.com, utility and G2C services such as electricity and water bill payments, online music stores will not be touched by this rule. Payment gateway providers such as CC Avenues, PaisaPay (Ebay), DirecPay (TimesOfMoney) or Transecute could be affected, however. The RBI directions say, “Transactions which are akin to a Delivery versus Payment (DvP) arrangement will continue to be facilitated.”

Responsibility Of Banks

RBI has informed banks to treat any account created and maintained for such transactions by such providers, called “intermediaries”, as internal accounts. It has handed over the charge of these accounts to the banks and ordered them to convert all existing accounts set up by intermediaries for users within three months – by March 2010.

Consider what could happen if the aggregator/payment service provider goes bankrupt? The customer’s funds would be lost, and hence RBI’s decision to transfer the responsbility to banks and make them in charge of these floating accounts is a good security measure.

RBI has also determined that only commissions, which have been fixed at the pre-determined rates and frequency, are payable to the intermediaries in order.

Settle Online & Mobile Transactions Within 2 Days

To ensure e-commerce and m-commerce payments are done in a timely fashion, RBI has ordered that all payments to merchants, except those that require a transfer of funds to nodal banks, should be done with 2 days of informing the user of the completion of the transaction. Those to nodal banks should be completed within 3 days. This will also come into effect in March.

Western Union

The Western Union Company , a global leader in money-transfer services, announced today that it has selected YellowPepper, a mobile financial solutions provider in Latin America, to participate in its Digital Vendor program. YellowPepper is the first vendor in Latin America to be selected for the program.

Western Union introduced the Digital Vendor Program earlier this year. The program is intended to extend the reach and accessibility of Western Union Money Transfer® services to mobile finance initiatives across the globe.

YellowPepper provides products and services that enable mobile financial transactions between financial institutions, businesses and consumers in Latin America. The company offers a variety of services, including mobile top-ups, transfers from a bank account via cell phone, and bill payments via mobile. The company currently has operations in seven countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panamá, Perú and the United States. In addition, YellowPepper has agreements with major mobile operators in the region, including Claro and Movistar.

“YellowPepper is well-known for providing convenient, easy-to-use services throughout Latin America,” said Matt Dill, SVP and Head of Western Union Digital Ventures. “They also have strategic relationships with some of the biggest mobile operators in the region, and we feel that this alliance is a great opportunity to introduce cross-border transactions into their established, trusted system.”

Western Union is certifying mobile platform vendors to reduce integration costs and accelerate go-to-market activities for banks and mobile operators by creating standard technical deployments. Once a bank or mobile operator contracts with Western Union to activate the Western Union® Mobile Money Transfer service, its consumers will be integrated with Western Union’s core transaction processing system. This system supports Western Union’s global network of more than 350,000 Agent locations in over 200 countries and territories.

“Each YellowPepper product addresses essential financial needs,” said YellowPepper Founder and President Serge Elkiner. “Now, more than ever, mobile financial solutions are critical to Latin America’s underserved financial community. We are very excited about working with Western Union, a global leader in payment services and money transfers, to introduce cross- border mobile money transfer services in our region.”

Other vendors in Western Union’s Digital Vendor program include: South Africa-based Fundamo, India-based mChek, U.S.-based Sybase 365 and Singapore-based Utiba Pte.

About the Western Union Digital Vendor Program

The Western Union Digital Vendor Program is open to mobile finance platform vendors who have successfully deployed a mobile money offering. Certified vendors agree to maintain current version control against the Western Union Money Transfer service interface. Certification is a technical designation and is subject to periodic review by Western Union. Mobile operators and banks interested in offering Western Union services should contact mobilemoneytransfer@westernunion.com. A direct contractual relationship with Western Union is required to activate Money Transfer services.

Commentator from Asia.

Technology and poverty. The two have proceeded down the ages in uneasy and inseparable companionship. Go back to one of the earliest applications of technology in human history-the wheel. The men or women who had a wheel could carry goods and building material and other such objects more easily than those who did not. It is fair to say that these people had a competitive advantage over those who did not have the wheel-in the context of those particular goods. It is likely that all people being taken to be equally poor, those with a wheel had a better chance of uplifting themselves than those who did not. Once the wheel became commonplace, so to speak, something else would have come up as the latest gadget to be craved-and triggered off another round of acquisition and deprivation. Technology uplifts many-but in doing so, technology also brings deprivation to many others. The rhetoric of the electronic sublime, as once famously described by one of my favourite authors, cannot paper over the contradictions that lie at its heart. Those who strive to use technology to bring about utopian equality would do well to remember this. That being said, human spirit is hardcoded to try and make a difference. The reconciliation between the super ordinate human goal for technology and its own harsh reality can be bridged through focussed innovation, an open mind and patience.

What, then, about mobile remittances-the phenomenon that is burning up conferences around the world? When remittances happen more efficiently and people bank more easily, is it not arguable that a significant (if not equal) number of people also get left behind? Therefore, is there a moral hazard in charging for a service that may be publicly positioned as a poverty-buster? Does the mobile remittance ecosystem seek to address inequalities which may continue in spite of or even be engendered due to this technological intervention? I bring this up because in recent months there has been great emphasis on the perceived capability of remittances to reduce or eliminate poverty. I do not deny that this may be an outcome in some markets. I do, however, believe that as a fundamental positioning stance for the industry as a whole, this is avoidable. Such a stance can only heighten the contradictions of technology and bring it at some stage into the perilous realm of national policymaking- something which we as industry practitioners should influence indirectly but always from a safe distance. Poverty attracts those who mean well but it is treacherous terrain for all concerned. After all, it has two sides- one is the poverty of numbers, as we know and as economists tell us. There is a deeper, darker side as well. That is the culture of poverty, ingrained among people after generations of deprivation and due to lack of opportunity. It may be reflected partly in the lack of infrastructure, basic hygiene, quality of housing and so forth. But it may also be seen in the way people are compelled to live every day. There is, more dangerously, the expectation of poverty. If the cup of kindness is found wanting, the reaction could be bitter, even violent.

But , if remittances constituted a magic bullet, then surely we would not see the practice of poverty in many cities anymore. After all, regardless of its often-touted drawbacks, traditional remittance has been around for a long time now. All too often, it seems that technology seeks to wrap itself in the rhetoric of solving one of the world’s most insurmountable problems. It would help if we could get around this tendency and look at what we can really do. The fact does remain, of course, that remittances constitute one of the key factors in making societies better over time. Mobile technology makes it easier to reach this objective. I argue, however, that the key does not lie in making claims about fixing poverty. The key lies in finding out how value can be used further when it crosses from a more affluent country to a less affluent one. Today, value may be hoarded or spent by a family or individual-wisely or unwisely. It may be used to acquire material wealth, buy essentials or be simply kept in a bank. Yet, with some innovation, it is possible to build enterprises based on this flow of value. After all, when money moves spatially, it’s worth changes fundamentally. A dollar will buy many Indonesian Rupiah or Indian Rupees or Pesos. That itself is a significant material advantage rendered to the end-user of the dollar. He or she can buy much more. Cross-border mobile banks or mobile thrift societies can help enhance this. They can keep moving the dollar downstream more and more, so that its worth keeps increasing. The enterprise can be as diverse as sustainable agriculture, a wind farm, a bus service or a grocery. Whatever it is, the creation of channels that help a remitter choose where his/her money is used eventually can make a big difference to the way remittances are deployed over time. One may argue, of course, that a remitter could get his/her family members to do the same in any case. In the model that I propose, the control over usage of funds-and not just the destination of the funds- lies with the remitter and he/she makes the decision in advance. A smart remittance agency in an origin country which has tied up with a local bank in a destination country could encourage group remittances that are invested directly into capacity building, entrepreneurial investment and other forms of direct and shared ownership. This creates wealth on both sides, deepens ties between Diaspora and home and strengthens the relationship between the migrant and his or her adopted country. But what the dollar also surely does when it is remitted in the right manner is build social equity-on both sides. Those who invest in capacity building and jobs can only generate goodwill and respect-among most people, at any rate. Those who get those jobs have a chance at a better life. The next generation lives well compared to the previous generation. Over a period of time, a corpus of well-off talent is built. A nation gets the human firepower that raises it to a different level.

The network economy offers great hope through the use of mobile technology. As it takes value and circulates it around the globe, it helps enhance wealth-wealth that can change lives for millions. Yet, as we have seen, this has its own moral hazards. The industry of mobile money must surely be very cautious about foregrounding the abolition of poverty as a key objective. We are not here for that. We are here to make life better for people-including ourselves- through shared prosperity. There is an important distinction between the two. The sheer enormity of the task of eliminating poverty is best left to the pulpit of ideology and the sequestered chambers of government. The task of making life better through technology is at the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit and this indirectly helps policymakers make informed choices about how to reduce or eliminate poverty. Our industry must be prudent in what it claims. But it must not shirk from bold ideas that are grounded in reason and deliver tangible benefits to its end-users. Put on the winged boots of Hermes by all means. But also be aware of Minerva’s owl and it’s flight in the dark.

Footnote:
The commentator is a mobile industry professional based in Asia. The views expressed in this column are entirely those of the commentator.

Interview with Manam Infotech CEO, Mr. Meher Baba, on how “MobeeBank” can achieve the “Operator Independent – Channel Independent – Device Independent”.

How did this concept came into your mind?

We are working with the banks from the time they started using SMS as a mode of serving customers. During this we have seen various issues such as short code number portability, regulatory limitations on SMS, banks inconvenience in having multiple solutions to meet growing channel requirements etc. This is a gap where banks need a better service. Since we understand the banks and financial institutions perceptions we come out with such a concept and eventually product too.

What are the benefits of “Operator independent – Channel independent – Device independent” concept to banks and financial institutes?

The benefits are numerous. For e.g. we have seen most of the banks will either go with SMS banking or USSD banking at the beginning. With in a short span (year or so) they realize that because of competition they need to come up with some GPRS based or mobile internet based banking to allow more transaction benefits to customers. Which means banks again need to go through the process again? This is a huge effort from banks interms of time and cost. We can overcome this issue with channel independent solution
In most of the cases bank customers are diversified interms of their telco service provider and handsets. So having a connectivity agreement with one partner does not mean banks can serve the entire customer base. This issue is more relevance for small banks who would like to use USSD or SMS channels. Hence a bank needs to have an “operator independent” & “Device independent” solution to ensure the uniformity of the service offering to its customers.
Having such solution help banks to enable real time transactions like bill payments, remittances, loan payments, fund transfers, pinless topups. So that non secure transactions can go on sms or USSD and payment transactions can go on secure channels like GPRS & WAP. This will help banks not only overcome the regulatory issues but also to use mobile banking as a revenue generating tool.

How is the acceptance of clients so far?

Well. Most of the banks are now considering this as a revenue generating channel rather than a simply information disseminating channel. Our recent acquisition is a Kenya bank with East Africa presence. Apart from this we have clients in Bahrain, Oman, India, Kenya and Sudan. We are in the process of signing up with few customers in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

You mentioned about bill payments and presentments in your product. Does this mean bank can use this as an alternative to POS terminals?

Certainly yes. When we compare mobiles with POS terminals, banks end up losing more revenues towards POS management and service availability. Hence inclusion of such services in mobile banking will be attractive option.
End of the day the concept works similar to POS and all the commission management, Bill settlements can be made online without any disturbance.

Do MobeeBank has provision for Mobile Payments & Remittance

As mentioned earlier in Bill Payment. Using MobeeBank one can pay their Mobile bills, recharge mobile, buy movie tickets, Flight tickets and bus tickets, apart from paying utility bills and doing various other transactions.

How African banks can benefit from your product to reach the unbanked population?

Yes, since we work closely with banks and financial institutes, we try to ensure that our product is on par with the industry or market requirements. One such new thing in our product is using mobiles to provide “Branch Less Banking”.
Especially in Africa the rural banking is very much limited. So we see branch less banking is a way ahead for this. This not only enables the banking access to rural unbanked but also creates economic opportunities for the young and energetic.

You are mentioning about “Branch Less Banking”. Does this mean its agents based and how the regulations are going to be addressed?

Yes, agents are vital part of branch less banking. Whenever any banks goes for branch less banking, the bank’s image and reputation are in agent’s hand. So its important banks take care of operational risks and liquidity risks associated with this model. I believe regulatory rules are helpful in meeting these requirements.
Since we work closely with central banks as well in understanding the frame work and regulatory issues, we have well established processes defined in the product. With which we can overcome such obligations.
In simple words personally you may be interested in doing a favor but system will not allow you to do that as it simply doesn’t meet the criteria.

Don’t you see any competition from Telcos in your model and how is their cooperation.

We don’t consider telcos as competitors rather we consider them as partners in the eco system. I understand every business needs to run in its regulatory hemisphere. Telcos can’t become a bank even though they have a very good mobile banking product, on the other hand banks can’t be a telco as they have enough cash. It needs its own time to get there. It requires a balanced approach as long as both are getting benefited.

Do you have any presence in Africa?

Yes. We have our regional office for Middle East and Africa in Bahrain and our support centre is in Kenya to cater to our large African based customers. We are also in process of starting operations in West Africa and Europe.

Do Manam Infotech have other product offers

Yes. We have few more products for Banks and Financial Institutes like Customer Acquisition System, Credit Card Processing System and Phone Banking. It’s our long term goal to serve as a preferred partner for banks on delivery channels.

Meher Baba
CEO – Manam Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

Visit site at http://manamtech.com/