Title: Branchless Banking in Pakistan: A Laboratory for Innovation
Author: Chris Bold
Publisher: CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Date (published): 24/10/2011
Date (accessed): 20/11/2011
Type of information: brief
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"Pakistan is one of the fastest developing markets for branchless banking in the world. Clear regulations and a regulator that is willing to both listen to the private sector and provide incentives for innovation have promoted a dynamic branchless banking sector. Two players
have already launched services, and others are waiting in the wings. This Brief highlights
both existing and anticipated businesses and outlines the key challenges and opportunities
that are likely to shape the market over the next 12 months.

Branchless banking regulation was first introduced in Pakistan in April 2008. From the beginning, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has taken a constructive regulatory approach by providing clear guidance and being willing to listen to businesses and adjust regulation where necessary. A variety of business models is emerging that involves a wide range of players, including mobile network operators (MNOs), technology companies, and even a courier business.(Notably, a bank remains ultimately liable to SBP in all the models.) The government is further encouraging innovation by piloting the use of branchless banking to distribute government payments. Taken together, these factors make Pakistan a unique laboratory for innovation.

SBP has issued four branchless banking licenses and is considering several others."

Title: Beyond Payments or Just Different Payments?
Author: Sarah Rotman
Source: CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Date (published): 15/11/2011
Date (accessed): 20/11/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Everyone is always talking about trying to move the branchless banking industry beyond just payments. Those of us concerned with accelerating “real financial inclusion” long to see credit, savings and insurance products pushed over new delivery channels. But is it possible that there’s still work to be done within the payments space itself, just diversifying a bit beyond simple P2P transfers?

For example, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk recently about really trying to crack the nut on merchant payments. Branchless banking providers see this as a huge opportunity not only for increased transactions (and therefore revenue), but also as a way to solve some of the tricky problems around liquidity management at agent locations when more people use electronic value for direct purchases instead of just cashing in and out. But how do small merchants respond to the possibility of being brought into the formal economy through using a traceable payments service? Will merchants and customers be willing to pay a fee to transact electronically instead of in cash? These are just a couple of the open questions that still need to be answered."

Title: On the Air, from Mobile to Radio
Source: Internews Network
Date (published): 06/09/2011
Date (accessed): 18/10/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Pilot project lets listeners record and pay for on-air radio messages via mobile phone, creating a new revenue source for community radio in Kenya.

Recently dubbed by TIME Magazine as the “Silicon Savanna,” Kenya is home to innovative mobile phone technologies that have transformed the lives of millions of people. Ahead of much of the rest of the world, Kenyans have adopted mobile money as an everyday way to handle financial transactions. More than half the population use mobile phones for everything from transferring money to family members to paying bills – even cab fare.

Now, community radio stations are integrating mobile money into their business models. Through a four-month pilot launched in August by Internews, in partnership with the mobile banking system MobiKash and a network of community radio stations, the stations will earn revenue while putting community voices on the air, through an innovative “M-Dedications” system."

Title: Branchless Banking Headlines & Highlights: Updates from Africa and Beyond
Author: Sarah Rotman
Source: CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Date (published): 13/09/2011
Date (accessed): 21/09/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"The South African bank FNB has recently launched its latest mobile banking offering Pay2Cell which allows FNB account holders to make payments to other FNB clients using only the recipient’s mobile phone number. This is a different product offering from FNB’s eWallet which allows FNB account holders to send money to anybody with a mobile phone. The recipient does not need a bank account and can withdraw the cash at any FNB ATM
…
An active branchless banking provider in West Africa, Orange has recently launched the Orange African Social Venture Prize. This initiative aims to reward innovative projects using ICT for social and economic development in Africa. In this contest, 3 winners will be selected and will receive financial grants along with 6-months of mentoring support from management and ICT experts. The project should target at least one country where Orange has a footprint and the prizes will be announced during the AfricaCom Awards in Cape Town in November. The deadline for applications is the end of September. .."

Title: Saving On The Mobile: Developing Innovative Financial Services to Suit Poor Users
Source: AppLab blog (Grameen Foundation)
Date (published): 11/08/2011
Date (accessed): 12/08/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Grameen Foundation’s Sean Krepp and Dr. Olga Morawczynski recently published this paper on Saving on the Mobile in the World Economic Forum’s Mobile Financial Services Development Report 2011.

Savings on mobile money
A recent survey of over 2,000 Kenyan households found that 89% of respondents used M-PESA, a Kenyan mobile money (MM) application, “to save” (Suri and Jack, 2010). Dr. Morawczynski confirmed this finding after spending over 18 months studying the financial habits of resource poor M-PESA users in two locations: an urban slum called Kibera and village in Western Kenya called Bukura (Morawczynski, 2010). The study found that M-PESA was integrated into the financial portfolios and acted as a complement, rather than a substitute, to other mechanisms. This paper expands on these findings by disaggregating the term “savings” and focusing on behavior.

Four scenarios have been developed to explain how and why resource poor individuals use MM as a savings mechanism. These scenarios describe the frequency of transactions and the costs associated with each form of savings. A case study accompanies each scenario to explain the circumstances leading to the savings behavior.

Two MM applications are central to this analysis— M-PESA in Kenya and MobileMoney in Uganda. Product ideas are derived from analysis of practices. To “go beyond payments” and be relevant to poor users, mobile applications must be designed to fit into existing practices rather than trying to change or displace them."

Title: Africa's mobile economic revolution
Author: Killian Fox
Source: The Observer
Publisher: The Guardian
Date (published): 24/07/2011
Date (accessed): 24/07/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Half of Africa's one billion population has a mobile phone – and not just for talking. The power of telephony is forging a new enterprise culture, from banking to agriculture to healthcare

Earlier this month, on a short bus ride through the centre of Kampala, I decided to carry out an informal survey. Passing through the Ugandan capital's colourful and chaotic streets, I would attempt to count the signs of the use of mobile phones in evidence around me. These included phone shops and kiosks, street-corner airtime vendors and giant billboard ads, as well as people actually using their mobile phones: a girl in school uniform writing a text message as she hurried along the street, a businessman calmly making a call from the back of a motorcycle taxi swerving through heavy rush-hour traffic. Not only were half of the passengers on my bus occupied with their handsets, our driver was too, thumbing at his keypad as he ferried us to our final destination. After five minutes, I lost count and retired with a sore neck. There was more evidence here than I could put a number on.

My survey underlined a simple fact: Africa has experienced an incredible boom in mobile phone use over the past decade. In 1998, there were fewer than four million mobiles on the continent. Today, there are more than 500 million. In Uganda alone, 10 million people, or about 30% of the population, own a mobile phone, and that number is growing rapidly every year. For Ugandans, these ubiquitous devices are more than just a handy way of communicating on the fly: they are a way of life.

It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the centre of a mobile revolution. In the west, we have been adapting mobile phones to be more like our computers: the smartphone could be described as a PC for your pocket. In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on."

Title: Fingerprints, the Next Big Thing in Banking
Authors: Alan Gelb, Caroline Decker
Source: Global Development: Views from the Center
Date (published): 21/07/2011
Date (accessed): 22/07/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"With the expansion of cell coverage and mobile banking, millions of poor and rural people can now access financial services. But as financial institutions reach new populations, it is becoming clear that there are other issues keeping people from formal banking, such as the need for identification. Thankfully, there seems to be an easy solution. Just as mobile phones have helped overcome the issue of proximity for banking, biometrics could do the same for identification.
...
Since 9/11 there has been increased pressure on governments in the developing world to implement policies consistent with international Anti–Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) standards. Included are the Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations requiring financial institutions to identify their clients to better record financial flows. Regulations typically require customers to present some form of official identification, such as proof of employment or address. For those of us in the developed world, this doesn’t seem like a big deal. But in sub-Saharan Africa where only 50 percent of the population has birth certificates, requiring formal ID excludes millions of citizens, especially poor and rural populations—women in particular.

To get around this, financial institutions have begun turning to biometrics. When Opportunity International (OI), an NGO which provides financial services to the poor, came to Malawi they quickly realized many of their target clients couldn’t provide the required KYC documents. OI approached the Central Bank for an exemption; instead of the required passport or driver’s license and proof of employment to open an account, OI clients are identified simply by their fingerprints. And to access their accounts clients use their fingerprints and smartcards at participating ATMs or points of service (POS)."

Title: Mobile Money for the Unbanked Annual Report 2011
Pages: 96 pp.
Publisher: GSMA
Date (published): 10/07/2011
Date (accessed): 15/07/2011
Type of information: report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"Over the last 12 months, the mobile money industry has doubled in size; and as the industry has grown, so has our understanding of what it takes to create a successful deployment. This 2011 report contains a selection of important best practices and insights that the MMU team have identified. MMU strives to provide the industry with practical, actionable recommendations for how to create successful Mobile Money services.

This report catalogues our key pieces of work from the last year, including the guide to driving customer adoption of Mobile Money, and the research that we conducted into how banks and operators can succesfully develop effective relationships to offer Mobile Money services.

In addition to these previously published resources, the annual report features a new article by Ignacio Mas from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation titled ‘Enabling different paths to development of Mobile Money ecosystems’, in addition to a new case study focused on Tigo’s first mobile money deployment in Latin America.

Contents
Introduction
1—4 Introduction
Chapter 1
7—18 Is there really any money in Mobile Money?
Chapter 2
19 —38 Mapping and effectively structuring operator-bank relationships to offer Mobile Money for the unbanked
Chapter 3
39—72 Driving customer usage of Mobile Money for the unbanked
Chapter 4
73—78 Enabling different paths to development of Mobile Money ecosystems
Chapter 5
79—88 Case study: Mobile Money in Paraguay"
Glossary
89—90"

via https://twitter.com/#!/ictdev and http://zunia.org/

Title: India’s mobile banking sector set to grow
Source: memeburn
Date (published): 23/05/2011
Date (accessed): 13/07/2011
Type of information:
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Banking by phone could transform the workings of the rural economy, but the industry first needs to allay fears about transaction security and overcome low literacy levels and banks’ limited reach in remote areas.
Leading figures from the telecoms and banking sectors meeting in Mumbai last week said that mobile banking — including money transfers, bill payments and remittances — was largely untapped.
“The potential for mobile banking is enormous, but it will take its own pace to grow,” said Amit Ahire, analyst at Ambit Capital.
One in 10 of the world’s mobiles is sold in India, according to technology research specialists Gartner, and the country adds nearly 19-million new mobile subscribers every month, making it the fastest-growing market in the world.
An estimated 775-million people are mobile phone subscribers.
Yet, at the same time, nearly half of the adult population still does not have a bank account."

Title: Mobile Money in Mexico
Source: Mobile Banking blog
Date (published): 09/06/2011
Date (accessed): 13/07/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Mexico is such an important market from a mobile money perspective. The profile of the citizens, the proximity (and dependency on) a large remittance market and the big growth in mobile phones make this country one of the best candidate for the next big mobile money deployment. Not much has been achieved in the past years. With many false starts (and failures), have marked the early stages of mobile money in Mexico.

The big success of micro lending institutions to bring financial services to the lower income is an indication of the need that exist at the bottom of the pyramid and that fact that well-defined and managed services can be rolled-out to reach a large part of the population. Changes in the regulatory framework have made the possibility to roll-out more financial services grow. "