Archive for: News
by Jim Rosenberg : Wednesday, September 30, 2009
September always feels like back-to-school around Washington D.C. — this has been a busy month. Here’s a recap of what we’ve been talking about on the CGAP Technology Blog:
Kane A. Russell shared some observations about how a farmer’s market in Hawaii has managed to connect the world of cash with the electronic systems that deliver benefits – What a farmer’s market can teach us about branchless banking;
Mark Pickens delved into those men and women who connect customers to their branchless banking service – in Understanding what drives profits for agents – M-PESA;
George Conard from Grameen Foundation’s Mifos told us what he sees as one big thing microfinance needs to go to scale;
As part of our podcast series on the future, we heard from Shamshad Akhtar: “Branchless banking is one tool among many for financial inclusion”;
And finally, Olga Morawczynski explained why the research that she and others have done prompted her to write “Why M-PESA should offer savings accounts.”
by Jim Rosenberg : Sunday, September 27, 2009
We were pretty excited by last week’s Economist cover story, “The Power of Mobile Money:”
Quantifying the benefits of agricultural and health services is hard, and such services are still in their early days in much of the world. The mobile service that is delivering the most obvious economic benefits is money transfer, otherwise known as mobile banking (though for technical and regulatory reasons it is not, strictly speaking, banking). It has grown out of the widespread custom of using prepaid calling credit as an informal currency.
Here’s a podcast with the piece’s author, Tom Standage:
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by Jim Rosenberg : Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Over at Global Voices Online, John Liebhardt asks, “Can social media help make microfinance sustainable?” and puts it this way:
As the internet age hit, microlenders began looking for ways to replicate the Grameen Bank’s success online. With the rise of social networking, especially peer-to-peer media, these lenders found their answer. The question, however, remains: Will social media help create a sustainable market for microfinance?
John notes that the question of technology as a poverty-fighter will get a hearing at Harvard later this week. Over at O’Reilly Radar, which we usually don’t think of as being focused on poor people, Ben Lorica makes the case that “advanced” markets such as Europe and North America could learn a thing or three about banking services: “Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better.”
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by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, September 14, 2009
Mobiles, mobiles everywhere this week – the World Bank on Wednesday hosts a fairly exciting gathering on what some have called the “first screen” that a poor person will use – the mobile phone. Our own Sarah Rotman will be there to talk about government-to-person payments and how they can be done better through branchless banking.
Our friends at the GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked initiative have a thorough write-up of the “Why isn’t M-PESA taking off in Tanzania” story – contributed by Emil Sjöblom and Gunnar Camner, and Caroline Pulver from FSD Kenya. Our own take on things, authored by Sarah Rotman, is here.
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by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, August 24, 2009
Who said August was a quiet month? Nokia India has something to say:
Nokia’s Indian unit started selling handsets in two rural states under a microfinancing plan that allowed buyers to pay weekly installments — 100 rupees ($2) over 25 weeks. The company plans to rollout the pilot program in 12 additional states, covering more than 2,500 villages. Nokia executives said people could use phones more as they cut spending on travel. “We don’t think the market will slow down for mobility in rural India,” said D. Sivakumar, a managing director at Nokia’s Indian unit. Nokia expects about 500 million mobile phone users in India by 2010, up from 427 million now. It already has more than half the share of India’s mobile handset market.
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by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, August 10, 2009
Would you like lime with your account balance? Mobile banking is headed to the Caribbean, as Telecompaper reports:
Cable & Wireless Caribbean, which operates in the region under the Lime brand name, has signed a partnership agreement with various indigenous banks in the area. The project was launched by ECIC Holdings, a private company held by 10 indigenous banks of the region, including Grenada Co-operative Bank, 1st National Bank St Lucia, National Bank of Dominica, ABI Bank, Caribbean Union Bank, St Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank, Bank of Nevis, National Bank of Anguilla, Caribbean Commercial Bank (Anguilla) and TCI Bank. The mobile banking service enables Lime customers with accounts at any of the member banks to access their bank information, pay bills and operate other banking transactions directly from their mobile phones.
In east Africa, the river of data is flowing, but does someone control the stream? Sure. Excitement over the new internet cable SEACOM‘s arrival in East Africa has been dampened by some news accounts that are critical of the way SEACOM is operating, as well as a concern over transparency when it comes to which service providers will be drawing on SEACOM’s bandwith.
On the other side of Africa, satellites are being used to try out new ways of connecting poor rural areas in Mali and Ivory Coast:
Consulting their peers for correctly interpreting x-rays and continuous medical training has recently become a lot easier for doctors in the hospitals of Timbuktu, Mopti and Gao. Thanks to the European Space Agency (ESA) the consortium TNO, IICD, ActNow Alliance and Avanti Communications have been able to install a VSAT satellite connection to facilitate the information exchange and communication between hospitals in remote areas and related institutions. The hospitals in Mali are one of the few hospitals who benefit from the VSAT connection.
It’s worth noting that internet connectivity is one consistent concern of rural microfinance institutions when it comes to using technology.
Over at GSMA, the numbers of people who have access to broadband speed mobile connections looks set to reach more than 150 million people by the end of the summer. Their numbers tell the story:
* AsiaPac accounts for almost 50 million live HSPA connections today and will have over 56 million by this September;
* EMEA HSPA connections will pass the 50 million mark any day and will have reached almost 60 million by the end of September this year;
* The US currently has almost 32 million HSPA connections with the number expected to rise to nearly 37 million by this September;
* The Americas will have just over four million connections by the end of September.
The Mobile Banking and Microfinance News Roundup will be back Aug. 24th.
by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, August 3, 2009
Who’s in charge here? We’ve made the point repeatedly on this blog that mobile network operators can reduce the “churn” or turnover (and associated expenses) of customers with mobile banking services. But what if we have internet-enabled phones everywhere in a few years? Does that mean mobile banking is not going to be controlled by the mobile operator? Will mobile phone networks be content to let competing financial service providers reach customers? Or will the operators insist on controlling access? Here’s one high-profile test of openness (or lack thereof) when it comes to allowing competing services of a different sort: Google Voice being blocked on Apple’s iPhone (though the carrier, AT&T, says it is not responsible).
Meanwhile, the analogy coined last year by Ignacio Mas that branchless banking should be as ubiquitous as a can of Coca Cola comes to mind while reading guest columnist Martin Roll’s comments in the Jakarta Globe about how consumer goods firms are innovating to overcome distance and cost to get services and products out to lower income rural areas of Asia:
Companies like Asian Paints and Nirma have understood that the key to succeeding in markets like China and India is a good understanding of the rural consumer and a vast distribution network.
That might seem obvious, and here’s something else that should be obvious but often isn’t: there’s still no standardized way to set up mobile phone banking services for poor people. Western Union proposes to be part of the solution:
There are different technologies being used worldwide…no one organization or bank is able to standardize mobile. The world is too big, it’s too early and it’s moving too quickly. At the same time, as Western Union made its services available, we had to do more work with regard to how our services should be presented.
Perhaps that’s another way of saying there’s a lot of people getting into this business. Here’s one more: today’s report on the rebound in cellular handset sales – analysts noting strength especially in Latin America and the Middle East.
by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, July 27, 2009
One thing that’s fascinating about mobile banking for poor people in developing countries is the fact that no one group has a total claim on the business. Are mobile operators dominating services? Or banks? Microfinance institutions? So for more than a year, on this blog we’ve tried to bring interesting news stories from all these fields as they might relate to reaching more unbanked (and “underbanked”) people with appropriate financial services. Starting today this service takes on a new format. As always, your views are welcome.
What’s the role of government in furthering information and communication technology (ICT) in developing countries? Does ICT help economic growth? The World Bank has some ideas about that, and they want to hear from you on Tuesday in an interactive forum. The topic is timely as East Africa celebrates the arrival of an undersea cable carrying broadband internet – call it SEACOM if you want to get knowing glances in happy hour conversations about Africa’s technological future. On Thursday, comScore, which tracks your habits with digital technology, will have webinar on their new mobile payments user survey. Though focused on the U.S. market, there may be lessons for reaching customers in other places. Meanwhile, PayPal is opening up its platform with an API (Application Programming Interface), meaning anybody can adapt the payments service it to their own applications and platforms. APIs have been used for a few years in so-called web 2.0 applications such as Flickr and Facebook. Should be interesting to see what impact it has on payments. I wonder what PayPal thinks about Symbian Foundation’s (the open source mobile operating system) view that by the year 2020 there will be 10 million (!) mobile applications available. How much of that will be mobile payments?
by Jim Rosenberg : Monday, July 13, 2009
by Jim Rosenberg : Tuesday, July 7, 2009
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