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A FRICA 'S LEA DING ONLINE RESOURCE FOR MOBILE FINANCIA L INCLUSION

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Africa is leading in M-Commerce – Shaun Campbell

POSTED BY EMMANUEL ON JULY - 23 - 2009

Shaun Campbell | Business Development Director, sub-Saharan Africa |

Sybase 365
Share with Africans, your experiences so far in the African Market?
The African market is leading the world in mobile commerce solutions for the
unbanked, semi-banked, rural and low income groups. The rural and low
income groups are specifically the people that benefit most as such solution
reduce the cost and time to travel to a payment point (whether a bank, MFI,
Shaun Campbell insurance agent, electricity office, family/friends). The opportunity lost in
Africa through travel for commercial reasons is huge and significantly holds
back the economies at all levels. For example in some countries Teachers must travel to collect their
wages each month – up to 1 day is lost in this process which equates to unnecessary cost, lost
contribution to the school & family. The same issues arise where ATMs are used to cash-out wages as
ATMs are not readily available in rural areas (if at all) and long queues form on pay days.
This latent demand for easier access to financial services has led to a high growth in mobile money /
commerce schemes in the region, whether deployed by banks, telcos or independent schemes. These
schemes also provide work for 10,000’s of people working as agents in all areas of the country’s POLL RECENT POSTS
geography, hence spreading the potential for further wealth generation beyond the towns and cities.
Should M-PESA Mobile Money has come to
Africa is leading the way, alongside S.E Asia. stay – Aleeda Fazal
transform to a full
Mobile Financial Inclusion seems to a major attraction to the Financial sector and Telcos but Commercial Bank?
CEO’s Interview: Niall
we are seeing more of Telcos, digging in.
O’Cleirigh – Macalla
Yes
Telcos fundamentally benefit from attracting subscribers to their networks and reduced churn. They also
No MI-PAY PAVES THE WAY
have easy access to the subscriber via the existing SIM cards and agent networks, plus large budgets.
FOR AFRICAN SUCCESS
This works best for the first-mover Telco, or the Telco with the better and most ubiquitous scheme. Once I dont Know
all Telcos in a market have an offering the advantage is less powerful and churn recommences and the Results
Mi-pay, bringing Mobile
initiative becomes harder to differentiate. Given that Telcos are in business to sell minutes of voice & Money innovations to
data this offering will always be a secondary offering to their core business. Africans – Simon Cavill
In some countries (Central African states being a good example) Telcos are not permitted to run mobile The Road Ahead for Mobile
money services. In this regard, Telcos must partner with banks or independent schemes to have a stake Commerce
in such a business, and not use their in-house scheme.
Technology feature : RollPay
Telcos and banks will continuously develop mobile money schemes, but these schemes will always be
marginal to their core business and will always be ‘islands’, i.e. exclusive to the clients of each individual Western Union Charts
institution. We are yet to see truly open schemes operated by banks and Telcos. At present there are no Africa’s Mobile Money
bank- or Telco-led open systems in Africa. This is where the independent schemes come in. Transfer Agenda – Interview
series
Is Regulations catching up with Innovations across Africa.
In some countries there is good progress. Mobile commerce is being embraced by the central banks as a Tagattitude Targeting 4
Billion worldwide Mobiles –
critical means with which to remove cash from the parallel markets, increase the economy’s moneyflow
CEO, Yves Eonnet
and boost GDP.
I feel that Nigeria has set a good benchmark by allowing limited or zero KYC tied to low value mobile Interview with Ashish
wallets, scratch cards as a tool for cash-in, realistic expectations regarding transaction handling and Desai,GM Comviva
security. East Africa, especially Kenya is also proving robust with mandating USSD over SMS and also
Mobile Money is win-win for
adopting a realistic stance on KYC. I often use these two countries as references and role models for Africans – Meneske Gencer
other countries in the region.
The central banks are now focusing on guiding the standards on the real issues of mobile commerce, such
as agent float management, consumer protection, security risks and trustee account management. This is
a sign of a market entering the next phase, moving on from early-life innovation to an established
business model.
Mobile Money Regulation: Telecommunications or Financial Regulator.
In my mind it is very clear.
Telecomms regulation is concerned with managing the distribution and usage of frequency and
associated telecoms issues. The mobile commerce market is not the direct concern of the telecoms
regulators, but they do indeed play a role in enabling fair and unhindered access to SMS/USSD
technologies by no-Telco players, setting suitable access pricing and consistency in Telco network access.
The owner of mobile commerce regulation is, in all cases that I have seen, the Central Bank who’s
national payments team & supervisory team typically research and set the standards, and manage the
compliance of ongoing services.
Whether the Central Banks need a dedicated mobile commerce team is a much debated topic, and I
believe that this will come as mobile commerce becomes more and more universal.
What Technology do you think is appropriate for Africa where millions of Subscribers use
Low cost Hand set?
This is a complex topic as there are several technologies available in the toolbox but few are actually
realistically deployable today.

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