Mobile Finance

A new agreement between Voice Commerce and Alcatel-Lucent is set to provide new mobile money and payment options for mobile operators, with the two companies aiming to satisfy the burgeoning demand for these services in emerging markets...

Mobile money is a highly topical - and highly successful - area of interest for the emerging telecom regions. As our report shows, mobile money can function in even the most inhospitable conditions. Michael Schwartz looks at some recent trends which can themselves be adopted by entrants to m-banking...

Kenyan customers of Vodafone are now able to use their mobiles to link to an interest-bearing savings account, as well as buy insurance, with Vodafone’s new money transfer technology, M-PESA...

Sirma Business Consulting has announced SBC M-Banking, a new mobile banking solution...

Mobile money is a highly topical - and highly successful - area of interest for the emerging telecom regions. As our report shows, mobile money can function in even the most inhospitable conditions. Michael Schwartz looks at some recent trends which can themselves be adopted by entrants to m-banking...

 ABI Research has conducted a survey on using mobile phones for person-to-person payments. Interest was low in the seven countries surveyed. Interest in the developing markets was greater - but ABI did not ask anyone in those countries. Michael Schwartz reproaches...

In an important first for the Iraqi market, Asiacell – the largest private Iraqi company and the first and only mobile telecommunications company to provide coverage for all of Iraq – has announced a major strategic partnership with AMWAL, a consortium of Iraqi banks...

MCB, one of Pakistan’s leading banks, has passed an important milestone. In less than eight months the bank’s MCB Mobile service has processed more than US$10 million worth of transactions...

Tagattitude has unveiled "TagPay online", the newest facet of its TagPay turnkey mobile payment platform...

Zain’s customers in Malawi, Niger and Sierra Leone are set to enjoy Zap, the company’s mobile commerce service. While Zap in Malawi is only at the pilot stage, the service has been up and running for nearly a year in East Africa...

The GSMA is one step closer to achieving its goal of financial security for 20 million unbanked by 2012: four operators have received grants under the Mobile Money for the Unbanked scheme...

Strolling through his local convenience store, editor Michael Schwartz saw the headline on the latest issue of the Economist: The power of mobile money. He is glad the Economist is summarising what Developing Telecoms has been saying for the last four years...

Nokia's new mobile financial service Nokia Money will consumers with mobile device access to basic financial services. For many consumers, this will be the first time they have had any access to such financial services...

A team of informatics and engineering specialists at City University London has received US$200,000 in funding from the UK Government’s UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) for a three-year project to develop new security measures for mobile banking...

Great economic and social momentum have been kick-started by mobile money initiatives, according to reports from the Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona. The GSMA, the industry's standard-bearer, has announced that the first three applications to the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Fund have been approved...

Mobile money specialist Emmanuel Okoegwale takes a look at some of the major players on the Mobile Money sector in Africa and elsewhere. This article was first posted as a blog on ZDNet in May 2009 when it covered eight companies. It is now expanded with addition of three further providers. Other organisations wishing to be included are invited to submit profiles to Developing Telecoms...

Telcos in Nigeria are taking the battle to the next frontier in coming months: Mobile Money. Not to be left out of this race are banks and independent providers which had seen the clearly untapped potential. No one wants to be left behind in the evolving ecosystems... 

As a part of our coverage on mobile banking, we are publishing a summary of a review from Financial Insights called Mobile Banking and Beyond. Increased convergence in the Asia-Pacific Internet and mobile banking channels is expected in the next 12 months...

 Kenya's Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is set to launch the National Payment System Bill, which is intended to safeguard public savings as mobile banking gains a hold in the country. The last three years have seen a staggering 150% rise in the number of banked Kenyans. Michael Schwartz summarises...

The GSMA's Mobile Money Summit is timely in the light of several recent developments, all of which bring home the empowerment that mobile money can bring to those called the "unbanked"...

Our review of mobile money mentioned a project in Gabon where a key player was the Toronto-based Redknee. Michael Schwartz visited Redknee and met its Chief Technology Officer Bohdan Zabawskyj...

Mobile taxation continues to be a major issue impacting mobile penetration across East Africa. Despite widespread investment from the mobile operator community, fierce price competition and market liberalisation making mobile more accessible, subscriber take-up in the region continues to lag behind the rest of the world...

Zap is the new service from Zain which the operator claims will become a comprehensive and accessible African mobile banking service. Zap is aimed at 100 million people in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda...

Bharti Telesoft, which provides integrated Value-Added Services to mobile operators in emerging markets, has been invited to be a founding member of the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Working Group by the GSMA, as a result of its work in the development and deployment of mobile banking solutions in emerging markets worldwide...

CGAP, the global microfinance centre has been releasing new research and data to encourage telecom operators, financial institutions and governments to see the business potential in expanding access to financial services for poor people in developing markets. The current economic climate makes the need for widespread availability of safe alternatives to cash even more pressing...

Did you know that 40% of the world's population does not have a bank account, and yet more than 60% have access to a mobile phone? Redknee and its operator customers would like to brief delegates to Mobile World Congress 2009 on how mobile money services are bridging the crucial gap, and how these services will change the industry and the way people bank in 2009...

Vodafone, Safaricom, and Western Union will be partnering to pilot a cross-border Mobile Money Transfer service between the UK and Kenya. This service will enable customers to send cross-border remittances from select locations directly to Safaricom mobile subscribers and within minutes...

Latin Americans living in the USA are keen to adopt money transfer using the less traditional method of a mobile phone, according to a survey commissioned by Upaid, the leading mobile payments provider. Upaid commissioned Research Now to survey US citizens transferring money to countries across Latin America...

The Western Union Company has created an alliance with Orascom Telecom Holding, one of the largest mobile operators in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Orascom and Western Union plan to work together to introduce mobile remittance services in select markets. The services aim to make low-principal, high-frequency remittances more convenient to the millions of consumers who send money every day...

In this viewpoint feature Stephen Gibb, Chief Information Officer at mobile payments specialist Upaid, looks at how businesses and consumers can benefit from cross-border payments in emerging markets such as Brazil...

In many developing economies, more citizens own mobile phones than own traditional bank accounts. A new research report by Mercator Advisory Group stresses the lessons to be learnt from mobile money experiences in South Africa, the Philippines, and Kenya...

S1 Enterprise Corporation, a provider of software for financial and payment services and Clickatell have announced a partnership to provide an on-demand text-based banking service which will be available to companies in more than 200 countries...