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Serving the unbanked by serving the banked lessons from safaricom smart globe and zain
In mobile money, we spend a lot of time talking about innovative ways to deliver financial services to the unbanked poor in spite of their income, geographic and trust barriers to banking. The story is familiar to most of us by now: someone in a remote or underdeveloped area can’t get to a bank branch or ATM, but does have multiple airtime dealers and other retailers within a few minutes from their home. A mobile operator comes along and uses these locations to deliver financial services - anything from money transfer to micro insurance. This story is well known for good cause: it captures the innovation taking place in the private sector that’s making a social and economic impact by reaching banking’s ‘last mile’.
But there’s another side to the mobile money story. Even in developing markets like Kenya or the Philippines, there are a lot of people who are already banked that choose to use mobile money. These people don’t necessarily live below the poverty line, but they often play an important role in the mobile money ecosystem as early adopters or key sources of funds for the unbanked. An important qualifier at this stage: no two mobile money models are the same. However, observations from the Philippines reveals an interesting school of thought: perhaps the unbanked cannot be looked at in isolation. Rather, (in some cases) perhaps they need to be considered in the context of a complete ecosystem which includes a person that is banked.
In this post I’ll describe three ways that leading mobile money operators in Kenya and the Philippines directly address the needs of the banked - and subsequently deliver benefits to the unbanked. Each of these examples relate to the challenge of getting cash in and out of a mobile money account seamlessly and are targeted at a) the banked, or b) users who are likely to be a source of funds for an unbanked recipient of funds.
Example 1: SMART Money introduces auto-reloader to enable quick cash-in process
SMART Money has deployed a number of ‘auto-reloader’ machines at SMART Wireless Centres in high traffic locations to enable customers to quickly load cash into their account without interacting with an agent. Though costly to deploy, these machines enable SMART to cater to customers that would otherwise not be willing to spend time cashing in and who are accustomed to automation. Customers don’t need to be banked to use the machine - they just need their personalized SMART Money card. However, by virtue of the fact that these machines are generally in high traffic urban areas (the majority of SMART Wireless Centres are in malls), they are presumably used often by people who would be considered a ‘source of funds’.
From a regulatory perspective, SMART is able to offer this solution to customers because the Banko Central Ng Pilipinas recognizes that people with personalized SMART Money cards have completed their proof of identification and passed KYC before the card is issued. Thus, KYC does not need to be conducted by a human every time a person loads their account through ‘auto-reloader’ machines. For security, the machines do also require users to key-in their security m-Pin (like a regular ATM) before transactions
go to this link for the complete article:
http://mmublog.org/africa-east/serving-the-unbanked-by-serving-the-banked-lessons-from-safaricom-smart-globe-and-zain/
But there’s another side to the mobile money story. Even in developing markets like Kenya or the Philippines, there are a lot of people who are already banked that choose to use mobile money. These people don’t necessarily live below the poverty line, but they often play an important role in the mobile money ecosystem as early adopters or key sources of funds for the unbanked. An important qualifier at this stage: no two mobile money models are the same. However, observations from the Philippines reveals an interesting school of thought: perhaps the unbanked cannot be looked at in isolation. Rather, (in some cases) perhaps they need to be considered in the context of a complete ecosystem which includes a person that is banked.
In this post I’ll describe three ways that leading mobile money operators in Kenya and the Philippines directly address the needs of the banked - and subsequently deliver benefits to the unbanked. Each of these examples relate to the challenge of getting cash in and out of a mobile money account seamlessly and are targeted at a) the banked, or b) users who are likely to be a source of funds for an unbanked recipient of funds.
Example 1: SMART Money introduces auto-reloader to enable quick cash-in process
SMART Money has deployed a number of ‘auto-reloader’ machines at SMART Wireless Centres in high traffic locations to enable customers to quickly load cash into their account without interacting with an agent. Though costly to deploy, these machines enable SMART to cater to customers that would otherwise not be willing to spend time cashing in and who are accustomed to automation. Customers don’t need to be banked to use the machine - they just need their personalized SMART Money card. However, by virtue of the fact that these machines are generally in high traffic urban areas (the majority of SMART Wireless Centres are in malls), they are presumably used often by people who would be considered a ‘source of funds’.
From a regulatory perspective, SMART is able to offer this solution to customers because the Banko Central Ng Pilipinas recognizes that people with personalized SMART Money cards have completed their proof of identification and passed KYC before the card is issued. Thus, KYC does not need to be conducted by a human every time a person loads their account through ‘auto-reloader’ machines. For security, the machines do also require users to key-in their security m-Pin (like a regular ATM) before transactions
go to this link for the complete article:
http://mmublog.org/africa-east/serving-the-unbanked-by-serving-the-banked-lessons-from-safaricom-smart-globe-and-zain/
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