Mobile Money Transactions

Telepin Powers New Etisalat Afghanistan mHawala Service

Today Etisalat Afghanistan commercially launched mHawala, its new Mobile Money Services platform and we are pleased to share that Telepin is providing the infrastructure for the service.   The mHawala service is a full mobile financial services (MFS) offering that includes central bank cooperation, banking ecosystem participation, utility merchant involvement, and salary disbursement, which enables complete mobile banking capabilities and future cross-border money transfers.
 
Dr. Ali Asgharzadeh, Chief Commercial Officer-Enterprise at Etisalat explains, “Mobile density in Afghanistan is currently at 50 percent and is growing rapidly. However, 95 percent of Afghan’s do not have access to banking infrastructure. This unique market cross-section creates a need for the investment we are making in Telepin’s Cayman platform.  We can now introduce a much-needed innovative service to the market with mHawala. We have chosen Telepin because the company is a key leader and innovator in the mobile money marketplace.”
 
Telepin’s Cayman Transaction platform plays a key operational role in the distribution and management of airtime, and will be extended with subscriber wallets for MFS services.
 
Etisalat Afghanistan is the first mobile network operator in Afghanistan to offer this entire range of Mobile Financial Services. Telepin MFS products provide mobile operators the ability to deliver robust financial services offering to their subscriber and merchant customers. Telepin’s software plugs seamlessly into existing mobile infrastructure, leveraging the investments already made in charging systems, replenishment systems, and value added service delivery platforms.

Africa continues to lead the way in Mobile Money deployment

With over 100 mobile money services around the world, it should come as no surprise to readers of Mobile Money Transactions that almost half of these are in the African continent. With 51 deployments it's very easy to say that Africa is where the revolution will start from.

For all the talk of potential systems from Apple, and trials on the New York MTA, the real action, and social change, is happening away from North America. But what's interesting to me is that as Mobile Money systems become more prevalent and accepted by a society, they begin to have positive side effects.

An increasing number of small businesses are using Mobile Money systems such as M-Pesa to bring down their per-transaction costs on goods and services, making their businesses more viable, more profitable, and able to offer a wider range of services to their customers... all because of the flexibility that they have to make and take payments.

Given that the current systems have a huge scope to be extended in the near future, it's going to be very interesting watching not just the systems, but what change they foster, over the next few years.

Telepin Powers Mobile Financial Services in Papua New Guinea

As a provider of mobile money transaction platforms, we get to work in some of the most interesting and remote parts of the world.  One such place is Papua New Guinea (PNG) where we were recently selected to power Digicel Group’s cellmoni mobile money service.  This service includes all the normal things you’d expect, as well as the ability to transfer money to friends and family anywhere in the country.  Also powered by Telepin and hosted on the Digicel network are Post PNG’s MobileSMK and MiCash from Nationwide Microbank.
 
There appears to be great demand by residents of PNG for a system that enhances cash safety, which includes phone transfers and a means to transact, store and accumulate value for later use.    The solutions from Digicel, Post PNG and Nationwide Microbank are delivering a best-in-class solution that extends value to PNG mobile subscribers, merchant networks and ecosystem partners.
 
Telepin’s Cayman Transaction platform is used by all three providers for mobile financial services (MFS) offerings.  The service is regulated by the Central Bank of PNG and has been developed in partnership with Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) with a view to promoting financial inclusion within PNG and the region.
 
For more details, you can read the press release.

Is NFC for commerce and when will it be a reality?

Insightful discussion around the future of mobile payment coming out of the GigaOM Mobilize Conference held earlier this week. It's great to see there are other people in the market that share the view that NFC may equate to "not for commerce" which is a view I shared with the Economist in this article earlier this year:

Critics of NFC technology argue that waving a phone around in front of a terminal hardly feels like an efficient and secure way to pay for something. Vincent Kadar, the boss of Telepin Software, a Canadian maker of software that supports mobile transactions, says that NFC should stand for “Not For Commerce”. NFC’s supporters claim that phones are at least as secure as cards and can be remotely “wiped” if they are lost.

I am rather curious as to who is paying for the infrastructure to take NFC from dream to reality. Same goes for the Isis, the carrier-led NFC venture (with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) , as they may follow suit with other joint ventures like Zoompass here in Canada, limping along for several years until a real business model is found. Definitely check out the video of the panel discussion which includes reps from PayPal, Intuit, Visa, and VeriFone.

 

Watch live streaming video from mobilize2011 at livestream.com

When will we pay attention to Amazon in the mobile payment space?

In all the speculation of Apple sweeping the mobile payment system by virtue of adding the letter “i” in front of the word pay, in all the promises of Silicon Valley start-ups exploiting social networks, and all the existing networks working on pilots and trials around the world, is there an 800lb gorilla in the room marked mobile payment?

When is Amazon going to get involved?

They’ve got just as many of the building blocks as some of the other potential players – there’s a relationship at both ends of the payment chain (with both customers and suppliers), they’ve a broad international structure, and they are a trusted name to “man in the street”. That’s potentially a huge advantage over trendy new companies like Square and Stripe.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that Amazon has quietly moved into a space proven by others. Their MP3 Music store is one of the more successful competitors to iTunes, and they recently launched their own application store for Android powered smartphones.

Mobile payment seems to be a natural space for Amazon to expand into. They already provide an online service for websites to use the Amazon checkout process; and have the ability to send money to people in a similar fashion to Paypal – once smartphones with NFC capability become widely available over the next twelve months over the major platforms, Amazon will have the mobile platform to take these services out into the physical world.

Starbucks mobile payment application keeps getting bigger

Starbucks mobile payment application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is expanding (reports ReadWriteWeb). Not only is it going to be available on for Blackberry, but after the successful field test in the San Francisco Bay Area, its spreading out and will be available in 6,800 Starbucks stores and around 1,000 franchises in Target stores across the US.

The app ties in to the physical Starbucks Cards, which now account for 20% of all payments made in-store. Like many retailers, the Coffee Company have managed to get a working card payment system into the minds of their customers, customers who trust not only the brand, but their Starbucks card. Now they’re transitioning this loyalty into a fully electronic system.

It’s one less thing to carry in their wallet, and there’s a futuristic thrill to paying with a swipe of your phone. And unlike all the hardware that Google have placed in the latest phones or third party hardware hacks, Starbucks’ app just pops up a barcode on your smartphone’s screen for the cashier to scan.

You can be sure that Starbucks are going to incentivize the switch from the existing card to the application, just as they pushed benefits to the card over cash in the stores (with simple twist such as free flavoured syrup and extra espressos shots if you used the card), but this is going to be an exercise with the warm-up already done.

Starbucks have loyal card users, happy to deposit money, that trust the system and know it has benefits for them. Exactly the sort of messages that any mobile money system would love to have.

You might disagree with how their coffee tastes, but their methods in rolling out their payment system are certainly worth studying… maybe over a double shot latte with some caramel syrup.