Archive for: CGAP
by Hannah Siedek : Tuesday, September 4, 2007
 Banking agents, retail and postal outlets handling banking transactions for financial institutions and mobile operators, are mushrooming all over! It took less than four years to cover almost all of Brazil. Colombian banks established 3,548 service points in just one year. In Peru banks manage more than 2,500 agents. Equity Bank in Kenya is piloting agents in rural areas. Xac Bank in Mongolia is planning to develop an agent channel….
Read the rest of this page »
by Mark Pickens : Sunday, September 2, 2007
 Sci-fi seer William Gibson said “The future is already here: it’s just unevenly distributed.” If that’s true, then the future of mobile is already happening in places like Kenya, the Philippines and South Africa. And two numbers released this month by Wireless Intelligence tell us why mobile payments and banking is much more likely to happen in poor countries than rich ones.
August saw the world’s three billionth mobile phone connection made. The first billion mobile connections took a dozen years, and the second just two and a half years, with 82 percent of new subscribers coming from developing countries. The third billion: just under two years. The growth of mobile is centered squarely in places like Mumbai, not Munich, Lagos, not London.
Meanwhile, ARPU, or average revenue per user, continues its downward trend, sliding another 12 percent globally. This means mobile operators are earning less per customer. The trend is most pronounced in poorer countries. In Africa, blended ARPU has declined by a quarter from 2005, down to 13.9 Euros, compared to the world average of 22.6. ARPUs look even less enticing if you also factor in churn (percentage of customers lost), which increases customer acquisition costs.
Read the rest of this page »
by Gautam Ivatury : Friday, August 31, 2007
 Vodafone’s M-Pesa mobile phone payments and transfer service in Kenya has signed up an impressive 140,000 customers in just 3 and a half months, according to Vodafone’s head of mobile payments. Although there are anecdotal reports of customers who are confused by the service, glitches in the sign up process, etc., it’s a good start. With this in mind, one wonders about India.
India’s cell phone user population doubled during the past year to 150 million at the end of 2006. That’s amazing growth and helps explain Vodafone’s recent purchase of most of the shares of Essar, India’s fourth-largest mobile operator.
So what about mobile phone banking? The Reserve Bank of India has so far been less open to allowing a mobile operator to issue e-money, at least in comparison to the central bank of Kenya.
One strategy an operator might take would be to partner with a financial institution that could hold customer accounts. If Vodafone could partner with a bank to make sure customers have accounts at a licensed financial instution rather than offering virtual accounts as it does in Kenya, then the regulatory hurdle becomes much more manageable. However, the business arrangements naturally grow in complexity.
A second major regulatory question, also dealt with in CGAP’s recent diagnostic on the regulatory framework in India, concerns agents. Key to a successful m-banking model is the ability to use agents such as airtime resellers to open accounts and take in and give out cash.
 Emergency aid used to be a short-term fix to a grim situation: handouts of food and other needed goods to alleviate the suffering of some of the world’s poorest beset by famine, drought or flood. Now, aid agencies increasingly deliver cash in continual social protection payments which help the poor build safety nets and avoid crises. And a few pioneering thinkers in the aid industry realize that cash + technology can also = infrastructure for financial services. Donors and governments can not only get social payments to the right people, but improve access to finance for entire communities historically off the radar screen of traditional banks.
Aid agencies are wising up to new ways of delivering help. They’ve realized that smaller amounts of aid, spread out over time and in the form of cash, can help poor people build there own safety nets, before a crisis hits. Cash is also much cheaper and more efficient way of delivering aid. Some 65% of America’s US$ 2 billion food aid program is eaten up by red tape and logistical costs, according to a US government report.
Read the rest of this page »
by Jim Rosenberg : Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Full disclosure: I penned this for psdblog!
Okay, we’re three days into the era of the iPhone. While my first-hand experience playing with one over the weekend was exciting (I’m intrigued but will keep my beat-up Treo 650 for awhile, thanks very much), there’s another nascent development in cell phones that could potentially be a much bigger deal over time: mobile (cell) phone banking and its potential to increase access to financial services for poor people.
At CGAP, we’re partnering with companies like Globe Telecom to explore how poor rural communities might be better served with appropriate, responsible services through mobile phones. As this effort gets underway, we’re also taking a look at how regulators in several countries, including the Philippines, are dealing with mobile phone banking. Here are some highlights from our preliminary assessment of Pakistan’s banking regulations when it comes to so-called branchless banking:
- Several mobile network operators (MNOs) have started developing concrete proposals to offer mobile phone payments and banking directly;
- Improving access to financial services features highly on the agenda of the Government of Pakistan;
- Key regulatory issues that may help “branchless banking” increase access to financial services are (a) allowing the use of agents (such as retail shops) outside bank branches; (b) easing account opening (both on-site and remotely) while maintaining adequate “know your customer” standards; and (c) permitting a range of players to participate in payment service provision and e-money issuance (especially MNOs), enabling innovation from multiple parties.
In addition to Pakistan, CGAP is working on similiar assessments in Brazil, India, Kenya, South Africa, the Philippines, and Russia. So, more to come…
New technologies are available to help microfinance providers improve efficiency, track operations more accurately, increase transparency, and reach new customers, yet MFIs struggle to select the right technologies and get the most from their investments. This Donor Brief offers guidance on how to ensure microfinance providers follow good investment and management principles when choosing and implementing new technologies.
|
 |
|
