Emerging Markets: MMU Revenue Challenge
Subject: In this post I attempt to estimate “critical mass” financial numbers for a mobile money to the unbanked (MMU) service to be sustainable.
Tag: MPESA
MNOs – Will RBI Disintermediate Agents?
Indian legislators should take a pragmatic look at the mobile money regulation. It will be up to consumers (ie Voters) to demand that the structures are in place to support a sound and fertile market for payment services. The economic growth and poverty imperatives greatly outweigh the justifications for RBI’s current approach.
Cash Replacement – Part 2
The common win-win for both mature economies and underdeveloped appears to be Cash Replacement. Cash Replacement has been the subject of thousands of reports originating from: economists, bankers, academics, non-governmental organizations. The objective of this blog is to provide a market basis for investors and small companies attempting to “quantify” the opportunity in cash replacement, specifically e-Money and non-card based schemes.
MNOs as Depository Institutions?
Mobile Money: MNOs will Rule in Emerging Markets
Payments, banking and regulation may well evolve differently in emerging markets over the next 5 years as new services establish a unique ecosystem that serves 1 Billion consumers never “connected” to the world’s economy.
Unbanked: Cash is King
While I was consulting w/ regulators and banks in Malaysia, I asked about the penetration of cards. The response from a lead banker was “Cash is King”. This response is a great summary for the key issues facing MNOs, FSIs and Regulators attempting to improve electronic payment penetration in emerging markets.
Nokia Money/Obopay
Nokia’s selection of Obopay is very curious, given that Obopay is a hosted platform that currently requires online registration.. quite a difficult thing for an “unbanked” customer to do in rural India. We can safely assume that Obopay will invest resources to provide for service and beneficiary registration in a 100% SMS mode (or build a NokiaWallet embedded on the phone), but there are still many holes in the service that are left to be plugged and a big business challenge in incenting remote agents.