Posts filed under ‘mobile banking’
accelerating growth
Transforming lives – CNN reports on the key role of the phone, in the fight against poverty.
Leading the way is the evolution of new mobile banking and payment models, tailored to local needs.
Uplifting.
“The cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development,” said Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of the 2005 book “The End of Poverty.”
“Poverty is almost equated with isolation in many places of the world. Poverty results from the lack of access to markets, to emergency health services, access to education, the ability to take advantage of government services and so on,” Sachs said. “What the mobile phone — and more generally IT technology — is ending is that kind of isolation in all its different varieties.”
Moreover, the profusion of payment services via cell phones puts places like Kenya and Uganda in the vanguard of mobile financial services. “You can walk in the middle of rural village in Rwanda and use a mobile phone to pay at a recharging station to recharge LED lights,” says Amanda Gardiner, acting program manager of Business Call to Action, a New York-based non-profit organization that is helping to bring more mobile phones to Africa’s rural poor.
mobile dawn
From banking to education to healthcare, the ongoing economic revolution in Africa, is being boosted in no small measure, by rocketing adoption of mobile phones, and increasingly the mobile Web.
The Guardian reports on a pattern that seems to be ever more evident and replicating, across emerging markets.
A new day beckons, a day of empowerment.
In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world’s electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.
The most dramatic example of this is mobile banking. Four years ago, in neighbouring Kenya, the mobile network Safaricom introduced a service called M-Pesa which allows users to store money on their mobiles. If you want to pay a utilities bill or send money to a friend, you simply dispatch the amount by text and the recipient converts it into cash at their local M-Pesa office.
According to California-based mobile-banking innovator Carol Realini, executive chairman of Obopay: “Africa is the Silicon Valley of banking. The future of banking is being defined here… It’s going to change the world.”
bridging the banking divide
With access to traditional banking channels severely limited, mobile banking has emerged as a crucial financial lifeline to millions of people across the developing world.
The NYT reports on the rise of mobile banking in the emerging world – aided by the increasing adoption of smartphones, mobile banking seems poised to cross over to the mainstream.
Importantly, by reducing the role of middlemen and limiting cash transactions, it is a harbinger of social change.
In Tanzania, a hospital sends money by text message to women in remote areas so they can pay for bus fare to travel for critically needed surgery. In Afghanistan, the government pays its police officers by text message to skirt corrupt middlemen. In Pakistan, the biggest financial network is not a bank, but a unit of Telenor, the Norwegian mobile phone operator.
Since December 2008, Orange has signed up one million people for its Orange Money mobile banking service in six African countries: Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Kenya and Niger. In Kenya and Tanzania, subsidiaries of the British mobile operator Vodafone now process more international wire transfers than Western Union.
wave and pay
Replace your credit card with your mobile phone – NYT reports that in a significant move to take mobile payments mainstream, Visa has announced the launch of its mobile payment service using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.
Shoppers can make a purchase by simply waving the phone close to a contactless reader at the merchant. Currently available in Malaysia, the service will be gradually expanded to other regions.
Any one fancy a “Citibank Nokia Vodafone Visa Gold” phone?
As for convenience, the technology standard will ultimately allow you to load multiple accounts onto one phone. The program allows phones to be used to pay for parking and public transit fares through a separate account.
Eventually, the system will allow credit and debit card accounts from multiple providers and payment brands. You need to run an application on your phone to switch the default account that is charged when you swipe the phone over a terminal.
dialing change
A not-so-silent revolution is sweeping across Africa – the Guardian reports how mobile banking could potentially transform the lives of millions across Africa. As with most innovations in the mobile space, emerging markets seem to be the testbed which will drive the evolution of mobile banking as well. However, until standard payment protocols are established by key players, this revolution could easily run out of steam.
The dramatic growth in mobile phone use in Africa – phones now outnumber cash machines by several thousand to one – is paving the way for a new set of services that turn the humble handset into a banking tool with the potential to transform Africa’s economy.
Services have sprung up that let people transfer cash by text message to other mobile phone users and give Africa’s vast number of “unbanked” their first access to financial products. Instead of using a bank branch, these services rely on local retailers who already sell mobile top-up cards.
