Latest MMT News

New speakers and exhibitors announced

Date posted: 18 November 2008

Every stakeholder from mobile money was represented at the inaugural MMT Global Summit in Dubai on November 10 and 11. It was a pleasure and a privilege to host such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd, and such an auspicious speaker line up. We hope to see you all again at our next event in Mumbai! The Dubai event is being reported on and discussed on our LinkedIn group, but highlights included Michael Joseph, CEO of Safaricom; Karim Khoja, CEO of Roshan; Brian Richardson, CEO of WIZZIT; Hannes van Rensburg, CEO of Fundamo; Carol Realini, CEO of Obopay and Dare Okoudjou, Head of Mobile Money Development at MTN sharing real life experiences deploying MMT, and spending a full hour answering audience questions.

With so many delegates seeking technology partners, the "mWallet Shootout" was a great success and a lot of fun. We divided the audience into small groups of 10 people, and sent them on a world tour of mWallet providers - from UK to New Zealand, from the West Coast of the USA to the Middle East, from Bangalore to Cape Town and from Frankfurt toNairobi (that's a lot of air miles if you're doing supplier due diligence without the help of MMT08! With 4 minutes demonstrations to differentiate each of the leading solutions, after an hour our delegates had a shortlist to send their RFPs to, and exhibitors had dozens of new leads.

Many thanks to our speakers for generously sharing their time and expertise, to our exhibitors for their kind support, and to our delegates for participating so fully and making this event a great pleasure to host.

If you'd like to take part in future MMT events, I'd love to hear from you - find me in our LinkedIn MMT Group at http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1137767 or email me at kieron.osmotherly@clarionevents.com.

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Date posted: 28 August 2008

Osman Sultan, Chief Executive Officer of du, one of the UAE's largest telecommunications services providers, joins the prestigious line up of speakers at MMT 08.

Rechargeplus and atom Technologies join the MMT 08 Expo. Both will deliver live product demonstrations during the interactive 'technology shoot out'. 

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Mobile Money Transfer Explained, Part 2: mobile wallets

Date posted: 28 August 2008

Mobile money transfer is the hottest topic in mobile payments now. Pilot programmes and commercial launches are being announced seemingly on a daily basis. But how do you make MMT work for your organisation?  One of the first things you’ll need is a mobile wallet…

In the course of researching MMT 08 – the world’s first independent MMT conference – I spoke to hundreds of MMT innovators, and am pleased to share my research in a series of papers. In this edition we hear from some of the leading mWallet vendors.

What is a mobile wallet, and how many are in use?

Hannes van Rensburg, CEO of Fundamo explains “the term mobile wallet is often misused to mean any store of information allowing financial transactions. This means hundreds of solution providers claim to have a wallet! In my opinion, ‘mobile wallet’ should also designate an associated value store or bank account. The majority of our subscribers don’t have a bank account or credit card. The value store associated with a mobile wallet must conform to banking requirements – it must be auditable, robust, meet different regulatory dispensations, pay interest and manage tiered fees.”

There were an estimated 10 million mobile wallets globally at the end of 2007, representing just 0.5% of the 3 billion phones. Sounds like a low number? It’s actually great news for mWallet developers, given Edgar, Dunn and Company’s prediction that there will be 1.5bn mWallets by 2015, representing an increase to 25% of the total subscriber base

Okay, so who are the mobile wallet vendors and how do they differ?

If you’re looking for a mobile wallet, your RFP should go out to companies like Affinity Global Services, Bharti Telesoft, FE-Mobile, Fundamo, Macalla, mChek, Mi-Pay, MoreMagic, mTranZact, Paybox, Redknee, Trivnet and Utiba.

While many vendors started out specialising in partnering with either banks or MNOs, CEO Amit Mattatia’s explanation of Trivnet’s market coverage is typical: “Our traditional market was primarily MNOs and Telecom Service Providers, however we have implemented multiple banking integrations and are increasingly teaming up with financial institutions.” mWallet vendors are also enthusiastically supporting MMT within Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), while Todd Achilles, MD at Affinity Mobile, explained that his business also supports “large retailers that offer loyalty and financial services to their customers,” as exemplified by their relationship with RadioShack.

András Vilmos, Director of SEMOPS UAE introduced their service as ”grown from a European project with the objective of establishing a European wide real time mobile payment service. Our concept is to set up local services with the involvement of local banks and mobile operators, but as we use the same operating and communication solutions everywhere these local systems can be interconnected, and can become interoperable.”

Andrea Stone, Head of Marketing Communications, Bharti Telesoft added “we are an early innovator, having entered the market in 2006 with our mobiquity platform. Our solution engenders the creation of a viable ecosystem uniting operators, finance institutions and merchants, enabling integration of in-house and 3rd party applications.”

Chief Executive Justin Ho explained that “Utiba has had a pioneering role in mCommerce deployments and Pilots around the world. We implemented GCash for Globe Philippines which was a pioneering mWallet service and which won the GSMA award for Best Mobile Messaging service in 2004. Our Maxis (m-Money) to Globe (G-Cash) remittance initiative is the first mWallet to mWallet international remittance service initiative of its kind anywhere in the world.”

Niall O’Cleirigh, CEO of Macalla spoke of how their “customers range from startups with innovative new business models to large established Banking and Mobile Operator Customers such as Bank of Ireland, Vodafone and O2. We offer customers the choice of hosted or local deployment and all Macalla solutions are provided from one platform, allowing us to deploy multiple services seamlessly.”

Heidrun Kirsch from paybox explained that they have “10 new projects in parallel with 20 solutions deployed globally (Europe, Asia, MENA, Africa, North America). As our references for m-payment standards in Austria and Germany as well as the ecosystem around MoneyBox Africa in Nigeria prove, paybox customers can create mobile communities in both developed and emerging markets.”

Girisch Nair, Group Chief Executive of mTranZact explained how their “technology fundamentally links a mobile phone number to a consumer's bank account. From a financial regulatory perspective, we require that the custodian of funds is always a regulated financial institution. For consumers that may not have an existing banking relationship, mTranZact enables the issuance of a payment card that is automatically linked to the consumer's mobile phone number.”

How do you balance robust KYC and fraud mitigation with a simple, efficient user interface?

“We employ a significant amount of user testing and practical experience from our own operations to balance what may be seen as competing elements to deliver an optimal solution for each market,” explains Affinity’s Achilles.

Justin Ho from Utiba added “One of the innovative ways in which we handle this is in being able to give different levels of ‘Rights’.  For example, level 1, for customers who have provided a bare minimum level of KYC, allowing 10 transactions, restricted to a maximum value of USD 10 per month. At level 2, for customers who have provided a better level of KYC but use a NOT very secure interface like USSD / Plaintext SMS, you might restrict transactions to a maximum value of 100 USD per month and 50 per month. Then at level 3 for customers who have provided a better level of KYC and have upgraded to a very secure interface like STK, the transaction limit could be greater than 100USD with an unlimited number of transactions. By allowing various levels of 'Rights' we are able to induce trials, and give an efficient user interface. Once the customer is ‘hooked’ to the service, we encourage him/her to upgrade to higher levels of ‘rights’.”

“We have taken the approach to provide real-time transaction level based screening as a more comprehensive and richer approach toward balancing the risk versus experience issue” concluded Norman Frankel of Mi-Pay.

How to integrate your mobile wallet with banks

Phil Sorrell, Director of FE-Mobile explained that “FE-Mobile’s m-commerce platform interfaces directly into the heart of the core system of the financial institution. There are no intermediate tiers involved and the SecureLink™ Java software (both handset client and server-side) provides full end-to-end encryption. To protect users from phishing, identity theft and other attacks, SecureLink employs bi-directional end-point authentication and users are authenticated via two-factors, the PIN and the handset.”

Amit Mattatia, Trivnet’s President & CEO added “integration with banks and in fact, any external system depends on maintaining a rich and sophisticated set of APIs, allowing painless integration to financial institutions, telecom and distributors and merchants. Trivnet has rich experience in integrating with banks and banking gateways, while meeting their required security policies. We support various banking protocols such as ISO 8583.”

Another key consideration in selecting your mobile wallet partner is which channels they support and whether it’s client or server side

“The Redknee service to date supports both SMS and USSD access channels. These channels have the distinct advantage of being standards specified and therefore supported by almost every Mobile handset on the planet. The Server based approach means that there are no handset client distribution issues to be resolved,” comments Ian Hendry, Product Manager, Mobile Money Services. “Redknee also supports a handset client solution to improve usability and provide additional security mechanisms such as PKI certificates enabling mobile digital signature and encryption of the financial transactions. In environments where this additional layer of security is required, the service is provisioned to the end user after performing a SIM swap.”

Fundamo’s van Rensburg, explained that the SIM card “provides the most secure cryptography to host an application. Millions of SIM cards across 15 countries have Fundamo logic on the SIM card. Fundamo also has clients on just about any channel you can think of: Java, Browser, GPRS, HTML, WAP, USSD, Structured SMS and even IVR.”

ASP or license?

“The Redknee solution can be provided on-site as either a traditional software license model with annual support costs or we can provide a pay-as-you-grow (or revenue sharing) model. The advantage of the revenue sharing model is that the upfront costs for the operator are reduced and therefore more of the available capital can be invested in the Marketing and rolling the service.” Hendry continues, “Redknee can also provide the solution as a managed service, similar to the onsite revenue sharing model. A sign-up fee will be levied to cover the hardware and initial set-up activities on the hosted platform, and a fee per transaction carried will be charged thereafter.”

Mi-Pay’s Frankel believes ASP is the way to go. “We primarily operate on an ASP basis. The current market business case with low volumes, market testing, trials etc and lack of proven take up models do not really warrant a licence based approach in our opinion.”

Beyond Mobile Money Transfer – bill payment and top-up

Trivnet’s  Mattatia spoke about how their mWallet “taps into the fast growing bill payment market and is turning telecommunication distribution networks into powerful enablers of mobile commerce in both developed and developing countries.”

Redknee’s Hendry explained that “the Redknee Mobile Money infrastructure allows for roaming recharge, remote top-up, mobile money transfer, foreign currency exchange, with flexible support for payment clearing and settlements across different regulatory and payment systems.”

Conclusions

There’s a lot of due diligence to be done to select your MMT technology partners and a variety of options either on the market. We haven’t even had time to talk about the option of building your own mobile wallet, the approach favoured by Vodafone with M-PESA. A great place to begin your selection process would be at the MMT 08 Expo, where the leading vendors will demonstrate their solutions and where you’ll be able to hear how to make sure your mobile wallet is part of a successful MMT programme. Good luck!

The technology providers present at MMT 08 will include:
Affinity Global Services 
atom Technologies
Macalla
mChek
Mi-Pay
MoneyBox Africa
mTranZact
Paybox
Rechargeplus
SEMOPS UAE
Utiba

Part 1 of “Mobile Money Transfer Explained” examined “the role of the global hubs”.
Part 3 of “Mobile Money Transfer Explained” will focus on “cash in, cash out – the practicalities of developing your agency network”. Click here to subscribe.

Don’t miss the “User and Analyst Verdicts on MMT technologies” and the “MMT technologies shoot out” at MMT 08 on November 10 and 11 at the Crowne Plaza Dubai. Here you will meet many of the world’s leading mWallet vendors.

Click here to view the full agenda. 

Steven Clarke
Event Director - MMT 08
Clarion Events, Payments Division
Email: steven.clarke@clarionevents.com

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New speakers and exhibitors annouced

Date posted: 20 August 2008

MMT 08 continues to gather momentum as more industry leaders including Belgacom, Krores, mTranzact and Moneybox Africa confirm their participation at the world’s first independent mobile money transfer conference.

Frederic Schepens, EVP, Strategic Business Development, Belgacom ICS and Vineet Katial, CEO, Krores join the 45-strong expert speaker panel to talk about the role of global hubs and cash in, cash out networks respectively.

mTranZact and Moneybox Africa are the latest technology providers to confirm their presence at the on-site exhibition and both will be delivering live product demonstrations in the greatly anticipated ‘MMT technologies shoot out’.

MMT 08 brings together the world’s most comprehensive array of mobile money experts to provide a definitive insight into the future of this compelling market. To register your place now click here.

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Mobile Money Transfer Explained, Part 1: The role of global hubs

Date posted: 7 August 2008

Mobile money transfer offers an opportunity to tap into the USD600bn money transfer and remittances opportunity. But how do you make MMT work for your organisation?

In the course of researching MMT 08 – the world’s first independent MMT conference, Steven Clarke, Event Director and Chief  Payments Researcher for the Clarion Events Payments Division spoke to hundreds of MMT innovators, and is pleased to share his research in a series of papers.

For part one of the series he focuses on the “global hubs” and asks three of the most prominent hub providers; Western Union, Monitise and TATA Communications, to tell us a bit more about what they do…

A new breed of service provider has emerged to link together MNOs and banks in the emerging MMT ecosystem – the global hubs.

Who are the global hubs? What exactly do they do?

“MMT hubs bring the economies of scale and foreign exchange savings provided by an aggregated model. This will help reduce consumer pricing,” explained Anna Kuriakose, VP, Futures and Innovation for Monitise.

“Our main focus is to create a global hub for interoperability for all mobile commerce transactions,” added Allan Chan, EVP Mobility Services, TATA Communications. We provide a robust, telco-grade infrastructure with the security necessary to ‘harden’ the information flow for MMT whilst providing connectivity between the MNOs.”

“We have unrivalled expertise in complying with the laws and regulations for each of more than 200 countries and territories in which we do business,” explained Matt Dill, VP of Digital Ventures at Western Union. “We are committed to compliance, and spent USD40m and dedicated more than 300 staff members globally in 2007 to ensure that each of the more than one million transactions we send each day complies with laws and regulations.”

Aggregation and interoperability. A robust infrastructure. Compliance. The key points of the hubs’ value proposition.

Monitise, TATA Communications and Western Union contributed to this paper, but other players active or rumoured to be entering this space include SMART Communications, Globe Telecom and Belgacom.

What are the key differentiators between the hubs?

“We have the world's largest agent network, with more than 355,000 locations – more than five times the total worldwide locations for Starbucks, McDonald's, Citibank and Wal-Mart combined,” explained Dill. “These locations are in the areas where our consumers live and work – rural towns and urban centres alike.”

Chan comments: “We already provide comprehensive telecommunication solutions to over 600+ mobile service providers worldwide and are established players in the interoperable hub infrastructure for roaming. We believe in providing value to MNOs through our new inter-operator hub service - mobile Commerce eXchange (mCX)”

Monitise provide a comprehensive mobile money roadmap which includes money transfers, payments and mCommerce – thus creating a comprehensive suite of mobile money services. “MoniHomeTM, Monitise’s gateway solution for International Mobile Money Transfer, provides banks, MNOs and prepaid card issuers with an effortless integration to money transfer hubs,” added Kuriakose.

Why should an organisation planning a mobile money launch work with a hub rather than forming their own direct partnerships?

“For a mobile operator to develop a truly global solution, they would have to go out and sign hundreds of agreements. Some companies do offer cross-border transactions, but the send and receive corridors are limited due to the fact that they have to sign individual agreements. With Western Union, once a mobile operator signs an agreement with us, they can take their ‘local’ service global,” suggests Dill.

Kuriakose agrees: “remittance hubs offer the ability to serve multiple remittance corridors. If MMT programme leaders were to create direct partnerships in as many remittance corridors, it would be less economical than working with hubs.”

“Don’t go to the expense of building your own MMT infrastructure,” mentioned TATA’s Chan. “Use TATA Communications hub - mCX instead. Let your MMT programme leaders concentrate on marketing to the consumer and leave the rest to us.”

When should a mobile money initiative start working with you?

“TATA Communications is currently working with Etisalat, Idea Cellular and HSBC India in the current pilot phase. We will be working with MNOs across the globe to enable global interoperability of MMT transactions” commented Allan Chan.

Similarly Monitise work with mobile money initiatives from the outset. Kuriakose adds: “we provide the technology for the mobile front-end as well as the technical integrations to the remittance hub of choice. In addition, Monitise would be able to work with existing mobile money initiatives in receiving countries, by plugging them in as distribution mechanisms.”

“Western Union is open to working with both mobile operators who are just beginning to venture into MMT – Bharti Airtel, for example – and those with established mWallets and MMT services, such as Globe Telecom and Smart Communications in the Philippines,” comments Dill.

Build your own MMT partnerships and infrastructure or contract with the hubs?

We hope this article has helped you understand what the global hubs bring to the MMT ecosystem. Banks, MNOs and MFIs launching MMT services need to consider if and when to ‘plug in’ to the global hubs. The hubs are ready. They have been developed by organisations with trusted brands, tried and tested infrastructures and are staffed by experts in money transfer and compliance. You need to evaluate whether it is cost effective for you to develop these capabilities for yourself, and whether that is scalable as your suite of mobile money services expands.


Part 2 of “Mobile Money Transfer Explained” will focus on mWallets. Sign up to the MMT Newsletter to ensure you receive Part 2.

TATA Communications, Monitise and Western Union will all be contributing to a round table debate on “What do the global hubs do and do you need to partner with them?” at MMT 08 on November 10 and 11 at the Crowne Plaza Dubai.

Click here to view the full agenda. 

Steven Clarke
Event Director - MMT 08
Clarion Events, Payments Division
Email: steven.clarke@clarionevents.com