111 Telecom Banking
111 Telecom Banking
111 Telecom Banking
Growing opportunities
for telecom banking
The mobile money industry is in its infancy, but growing fast in parts of the world where more than billion people have
TEXT David Callahan
a mobile phone but no access to banking services. Now operators can do what banks cannot.
A RECENT ADVERTISEMENT on South African
Within a relatively short period of time, services such as m-pesa in Africa and GCash
in the Philippines have proven that the very
poor are every bit as interested in financial
services as the wealthy. In the Philippines,
for example, percent of active users earn
less than usd per day, according to Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (cgap).
gsma and McKinsey found that percent
of low-income households globally want to
use mobile money as a savings vehicle, compared with percent across all income
groups. Among the poorest segments, about
percent have mobile money accounts with
an average balance of about usd .
As of August , the number of mobile
money deployments in the world reached
, according to gsma. All of them face an
uphill battle introducing a new product
and many will not succeed.
Be that as it may, the industrys successes
have yielded a number of best practices that
were recognized at the gsma Mobile
Money Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Success stories such as GCash, which is
offered by Globe, underscore the importance
of combining assets and capabilities from
two distinct areas: telecom and banking. Furthermore, an extensive ecosystem of partners to manage cash collections and disbursements is required in order to expand
the service and reach new customer segments.
Cash payments:
TRUSTED BRANDS
mobile-money
David Callahan
PHOTO
John Javonella
EBR #1 2011 57