Archive for: CGAP

Thanks to our colleague Jeanette Thomas for this note on the 2008 CGAP Microfinance Photography Contest.

People come from all corners every winter for the Great Pushkar Fair, known as Cattle Fair, in Rajasthan. This image of a camel owner making use of mobile technology at the Fair gained a special mention in the 2008 CGAP Microfinance Photography Contest. One of 25 winners in this year’s Contest, the image was taken by Sandipan Majumdar.

First prize in the Contest went to a teacher in a government school in West Bengal, India, for an image he shot in Tarapur village, Birbhum, of a girl preparing radishes to take to market. Amateur photographer Somenath Mukhopadyay won out over more than 700 entries from professional and non-professional photographers in 40 countries all over the world. Second prize goes to an image of traditional spinning by Kushal Gangopadhyay. And third prize goes to Ellen de Leon of the Philippines for a dramatic shot of a Muslim woman drying corn.

Last week, CGAP hosted a roundtable and webinar on the important topic of how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better.

We had a great response both in person and online through this blog.  Thank you to all who participated and added to the discussion with thoughtful questions.

If you missed the presentations, or if you’d like to hear them again, you can now access the archived presentations and video.

Presentations: Building Agent Networks & Creating Regulatory Space

Video: Introduction and Sessions 1 & 2 and Session 3 (requires RealPlayer)

Introduction by Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of CGAP

Session 1: Driving mass market customer usage
Moderator: Kabir Kumar (CGAP); Panelists: Brian Richardson (WIZZIT, South Africa), Bold Magvan (XacBank, Mongolia)

Session 2: Building a viable, motivated network of agents
Moderator: Mark Pickens (CGAP); Panelists: Nick Hughes (Vodafone Group), Sam Kamiti (Equity Bank, Kenya), Carl Johan Rosenquist (c/o Maldives Monetary Authority)

Session 3: Creating and taking advantage of regulatory space
Moderator: Tim Lyman (CGAP); Panelists: Rizza Maniego-Eala (Globe Telecom, Philippines), Abbas Sikander (Tameer Bank, Pakistan)

Here’s a great write-up of the sessions from Patrick Philippe Meier at Tufts. Thank you Patrick!

Here in Washington D.C., it is easy to avoid owning a car (personally I haven’t owned a vehicle since 1995). We have a car-sharing service called Zipcar, where you pay by the hour to use the vehicle. The price includes the use of the car, fuel, and insurance. The city provides designated parking spaces, because officials have an interest in reducing traffic congestion and pollution. Call this a car “utility.” Like my electricity service or my water bill, I only pay for what I use. I don’t own the infrastructure (the car, the power plant, etc.). Tom Friedman at the New York Times wrote last week about a much more ambitious version of “car as utility” or what he calls car 2.0:

Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car …and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cellphone and the minutes from AT&T. That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive. G.M. sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.

Reading this column got me thinking about a recent paper that Ignacio Mas wrote here at CGAP. The title is a bit misleading in my own opinion – “Realizing the Potential of Branchless Banking: Challenges Ahead.” One key idea that undergirds the paper is that a payments system/network itself could be considered a utility – just like a car sharing service – where people pay for what they use. And obviously, the cheaper and more available appropriate financial services are, the more people can use them:

But for the payments network to be useful, people need to be able to transfer value through the payment network in a way that is convenient, reliable and secure, widely available, affordable, and useful. We need to understand what drives customers, make the economics work for banking agents, provide transactional accounts for all, and identify shared industry models.

What makes visioning a payments utility possible is the technology available today, which can be used to bridge distances, close information gaps, contain settlement risks, and generally reduce transaction costs. Now the challenge is to develop attractive services that engage customers and workable business models that enable decentralized, largely private, institutions to build this payments utility.

You can download the paper here.

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Thursday, Dec. 11 from 2pm – 5pm Eastern we’ll have a live webcast from the World Bank in Washington and if you can’t join us in person, join us online here at the CGAP Technology Blog.

We thought it would be great to get some of our partners together to share what they’re doing with each other – and with you. Share your questions at the end of this blog post, as a comment. We’ll put  them to the panelists on Thursday. Here are the details:

Mobile Banking for Poor People: Pioneer Perspectives
a CGAP roundtable and webinar

Dec. 11, 2008 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm
World Bank Headquarters, Washington DC | online at http://technology.cgap.org

Join CGAP for a lively discussion on how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better.

By the end of 2008, the UN says there will be four billion mobile phone connections globally. Millions of air-time resellers and retail agents in developing countries make it possible to distribute financial services at far lower cost than through traditional channels.

Yet in many ways, it is still early days for mobile phone banking. Examples of successful large-scale implementations that target poor customers, and deliver products other than payments and transfers are rare. CGAP, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is working to increase the numbers of such successful m-banking projects. CGAP has provided technical advice, market research and funding to the following organizations. The goal is to increase the reach and scale of financial services for poor people worldwide.

Panelists
-Nick Hughes, Vodafone Group
-Rizza Maniego-Eala, Globe Telecom (Philippines)
-Sam Kamiti, Equity Bank (Kenya)
-Ali Abbas Sikander, Tameer Bank (Pakistan)
-Ganhuyag Ch. Hutagt, XacBank (Mongolia)
-Brian Richardson, Wizzit (South Africa)
-Carl Johan Rosenquist, c/o Maldives Monetary Authority (Maldives)

Hear real-world experiences with implementing mobile banking solutions at scale, in multiple markets, with a diverse range of clients.

Join CGAP and industry experts at a Virtual Conference to discuss the impact of the financial crisis on microfinance and poor people: The Financial Crisis and Microfinance: Experience, Insights, and Implications.

Over the course of three days (November 18-20), participants will share their experiences and insights and discuss how to respond to upcoming challenges. The Virtual Conference will focus on microfinance institutions and their clients, and on donors and investors.

To register for this conference, please click here, or copy and paste the following URL in a new browser window: http://nutshellurl.com/24c.

Ahead of the conference, we encourage all participants to complete a short survey to help guide our discussion. Results will be compiled and shared with all participants during the conference.

We thought it would be great to get some of our partners together to share what they’re doing with each other – and with you. Here’s the announcement:

Mobile Banking for Poor People: Pioneer Perspectives
a CGAP roundtable and webinar

Dec. 11, 2008 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm followed by a networking reception
World Bank Headquarters, Washington DC | online at http://technology.cgap.org

Join CGAP for a lively discussion on how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better.

By the end of 2008, the UN says there will be four billion mobile phone connections globally. Millions of air-time resellers and retail agents in developing countries make it possible to distribute financial services at far lower cost than through traditional channels.

Yet in many ways, it is still early days for mobile phone banking. Examples of successful large-scale implementations that target poor customers, and deliver products other than payments and transfers are rare. CGAP, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is working to increase the numbers of such successful m-banking projects. CGAP has provided technical advice, market research and funding to the following organizations. The goal is to increase the reach and scale of financial services for poor people worldwide.
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As promised, here is the video and presentation from today’s webinar that Kabir Kumar and Ignacio Mas lead, based on their recent paper: Banking on Mobiles: Why, How, for Whom?

Thanks to all of you who joined us in person or online.

Presentation: CGAP Mobile Banking Webinar (881kb pdf)

Video: CGAP Mobile Banking Webinar (requires RealPlayer)

Background
The promise of mobile banking is well known; harder to find are examples of solid implementation and mass roll out beyond payments and transfers. In Banking on Mobiles: Why, How, for Whom? CGAP examines the business case and deployment options for smaller banks and microfinance institutions. With effective partnerships and technical choices (which affect customer uptake), we believe there is a strong market opportunity to reach poor people with a broad range of financial services.

This Wednesday, CGAP’s Kabir Kumar and Ignacio Mas will lead a discussion based on their recent paper: Banking on Mobiles: Why, How, for Whom?

The announcement is below. Check back here for updates on Wednesday. Submit your questions by commenting on this blog post or just write to me at jrosenberg@worldbank.org.

-Jim

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Today, CGAP is announcing a new effort around mobile banking  to identify, fund, research and champion technology enabled banking services for 25 million people in 20 countries. CGAP CEO Elizabeth Littlefield will announce the plan at the Clinton Global Initiative’s “Mobile Banking Call to Action.” That takes place at 4pm eastern time in New York City.

Press release follows the jump…meanwhile, you can watch the Clinton Global Iniative here.

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