In December, 16 companies were given a provisional license to do mobile payments and banking. 6 of them are bank linked, and 10 of them are independent. A truly hot climate for mobile banking is emerging in Nigeria, where all players were forced to start at the same time, no matter their size or reach. Notably, only one mobile operator was included, MTN.
“only 21% (22 million people) of the adult population in Nigeria has a bank account, while 74% of the adult population (approximately 64 million people), have never been banked… Nigeria has proven a huge market for the adoption of mobile telephony. With almost 80 million mobile phone users.”
Peter is one of the principals for one of the ten independent companies who got a license, Eartholeum Networks, and it’s home to their QikQik product for mobile banking. They’ve had over $1m in investment to date, and like all of their competitors are scaling up as quickly as possible. Who ever executes fastest (and maybe best), and gets critical mass in the market, will win.
Some of the services that QikQik supports:
One lesson from Mpesa’s success in Kenya is that you need to quickly reach critical mass with consumers, and that’s only done with a big investment in the agent network, making it easy for people to use the system.
Eartholium’s main focus is to enable third-party outlets such as post offices, retailers, petrol Stations, quick service restaurants, neighbourhood shops and pharmacies as QikQik Agents to perform functions such as customer due diligence for account opening, basic cash deposit and withdrawal in addition to transactional or payment services in areas where banks and other financial institutions do not have sufficient incentive or capacity to establish formal branches.
The race is on, and I’m very interested to see who will win this most populous and lucrative market in Africa.
]]>(Probably the most lucrative space in mobiles in Africa right now, it’s amazing it’s taken this long to really get started)
Canadian firm Redknee selected to supply Uganda Telecom with mobile money services.
Mxit (South African chat client) starts bridging the gap with mobile money. It uses Standard Bank’s MiMoney as an electronic payment voucher that can be purchased through self-banking channels and various retailers.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the GSM Association, have announced a programme that will expand the availability of mobile banking services in the developing world. The Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme, supported by a US$12.5 million grant from the foundation
(This is all the rage now in the foundation and non-profit space)
50 case studies of mHealth projects, the majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, by the UN Foundation. (Download the 4.3Mb PDF)
Nokia and Adobe have announced a $10 million fund to develop Flash based applications for mobile phones. The new fund is a result of the Open Screen Project, an industry-wide initiative of more than 20 industry leaders set to enable a consistent experience for web browsing and standalone applications.
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