We’re just two weeks from the Mobile Money Summit…where all will be revealed - the results of the CGAP-GSMA Mobile Money Market Sizing Study.  The findings describe in detail how unbanked people use mobile money services, and also provide a framework based on industry best practices to help mobile operators drive initial adoption and progress towards more sophisticated offerings, such as savings and credit.

As part of the study, we conducted a survey of Filipino unbanked mobile money users. We found:

• One-half of mobile money users in the Philippines were previously unbanked;
• Unbanked non-users tend to know telco brands better than bank brands, and already have a view of m-banking as easy or very easy to use (72%);
• However, only 21% feel m-banking is a product for “people like me”, which is significant.

And there’s more:

• 16% of unbanked non mobile money customers have in fact been banked in the past but have abandoned banking as the services were too expensive (36%) or no longer needed (43%);
• 58% of unbanked Filipinos indicate that they do save, but entirely through informal mechanisms;
• Unbanked customers are more likely to purchase in high frequency and low values i.e. in the Philippines mobile money users “top-up” on average fourteen times per month;
• 90% of users surveyed feel that their money is safe with mobile money.