Archive for: May, 2008

Jamii Bora is a rapidly growing Kenyan MFI which is using 200 handheld terminals with their 185,000 members, via 72 branches and 142 outlets in 13 locations across the country. JB staff are adamant that going electronic has allowed their back office to keep up with the rapidly growing numbers of clients coming through the front door. The Sagem-branded POS terminals are equipped with a magnetic stripe reader for debit cards, an alphanumeric keypad, display screen, and thumbprint reader. They connect to the MFI’s core banking system via GPRS over the local mobile networks. Jamii Bora has re-engineered its processes so that nearly all transactions are completed via the POS, the client’s debit card, and their thumbprint as identification.
Clients have more confidence in printed rather than handwritten receipts. This is particularly important for Jamii Bora’s clients, who organize in 5-person groups and usually send 1 member with all of their repayments and deposits. The POS application has been customized to print out itemized receipts which group members can use to verify transactions were correctly completed. The migration to electronic has also radically sped up data processing. Clients can see their money in the account the next day, which is valuable as Jamii Bora ties loan size to the amount of savings on deposit. And the MFI can also see the end of day cash position for its 72 branches, a simple but critical piece of data for management.

Read the rest of this page »

We’ve been busy here at CGAP. Since we scaled up the Technology Program in 2007, we have:

• shaped 11 projects with microfinance institutions, banks, mobile network operators and payment system providers that we expect will serve millions of poor, unbanked people in Colombia, Ecuador, India, Kenya, Maldives, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines and South Africa.
• consulted with more than 600 central bankers, regulators, bankers, mobile operators and others as we assessed the regulatory environment for branchless banking in 10 countries: Brazil, Colombia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia and South Africa.
• published 4 papers on branchless banking. In the next two months 4 more will be published: on government payments helping to expand financial services delivery; on mobile operators, not banks, as drivers of mobile banking; a practical analysis of connectivity options for MFIs; and a review of related outsourcing IT options and challenges.

Want to know more? Download the CGAP Technology Program Update. Or write to us at technology@cgap.org.

“Standardized innovation” is the phrase used by Dialog Telekom’s (Sri Lanka) Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya at the Mobile Money Summit in Cairo today. In a phrase I think is quite useful, he was summarizing the need to have mobile banking standards, interoperability, worldwide. Right now we are observing many proprietary systems taking shape – most notably, M-PESA in Kenya, Smart Communications, and as they move further into the m-banking space, Western Union. Imagine having hundreds of transaction networks – Visas, Mastercards – that don’t talk to each other. Hopefully, that’s not the direction in which mobile banking is headed. Proprietary is fine, interoperable is essential.

Read the rest of this page »