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.
WIZZIT
Slogan: Your Bank in your Pocket
WIZZIT is a bank operating as a division of The South African Bank of Athens Limited aimed at the unbanked and under banked segment of the population utilizing cell phone technology. WIZZIT was launched in November 2004 and providing affordable banking to the mass market. The service works across all the networks and all phones and SIM cards.
WIZZIT solves not only an accessibility and affordability issue but from a convenience point of view offers 24/7 real time transactions and hence is "Your Bank in Your Pocket." WIZZIT is recognized as the global pioneer in mobile banking.
It operates a ‘virtual bank' in South Africa that is challenging the branch legacy that is associated with traditional banks, in order to bank the un-banked and till date, it had succeeded in signing up to 5 million subscribers.
To reach its customers, WIZZIT has adopted a unique direct sales approach, employing nearly 2,000 previously un-employed WIZZkids with good local knowledge and contacts of the neighbourhoods they operate in. In addition to being able to conduct cellphone-to-cellphone transactions, WIZZIT account holders are issued Maestro debit cards that can be used at any ATM or retailer. WIZZIT charges per-transaction fees that range from 99c (USD 0.15) to R4.99 (USD 0.78) and does not charge a monthly fee nor require a minimum balance. There are no transaction limitations - the service is purely pay-as-you-go.
Footprint: South Africa
Founding Director and CEO of WIZZIT: Brian Richardson
M-PESA
Slogan: Fast, Safe and Affordable
M-PESA was launched in 2007. Since this time, it has reached nearly six million people in a country with a population of 31 million people where just 5 million people have bank accounts.
M-PESA is a Safaricom service allowing subscribers to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all Safaricom subscribers (Prepay and Postpay), even without a bank account. Registration is FREE and available at any M-PESA Agent countrywide. The M-PESA application is installed on the SIM card and works on all makes of handsets.
The service allows Kenyans to transfer money fast, safely and affordably using the mobile phone. Through M-PESA, a customer can send money to another mobile phone user, withdraw cash, buy airtime for themselves or another prepaid subscriber, pay bills and make loan repayments.
M-PESA offers a very simple and secure customer proposition. Simple: The product that Vodafone piloted prior to formally launching M-PESA looked very different from the one they now offer to customers. This former product was much more complex, including features such as group lending models, group products, and treasurer accounts. During the pilot, they learned that much of this complexity had to be stripped away to meet a very specific, narrow demand from the customer: person to person money transfers.
In addition, the user experience has been simplified. There are no signing-up fees and no minimum balances to confuse the customer with hidden fees or conditions. M-PESA's user interface is intuitive. It works on very basic handsets, and does not require a smart phone. Since 90% of the mobile phones in the Kenyan market are not smart phones, it was imperative that M-PESA work on the simple devices that customers already had.
Secure: Vodafone has also established a secure system that gives customers a sense of confidence. Transactions are completed within 15-30 seconds and customers receive an SMS confirmation that the money has been sent. Vodafone has a back-office system that tracks every transaction and makes it possible to correct any errors and respond to customer concerns. The entire platform is data-rich and transactions leave a long paper trail making the platform an unconducive place for money launderers to operate. Overall, M-PESA has high visibility and Vodafone realizes that trust must be at the heart of their business model.
M-PESA reaches customers through its network of agents. Safaricom has leveraged its existing retail distribution channels to serve as cash-in and cash-out points for M-PESA customers. In addition to this network, it has also signed up other retail stores that wish to include M-PESA services in their product offerings. Vodafone has properly aligned the incentives for these agents to participate, mainly through its commission payments for transactions, but also through benefits such as the increased foot traffic into their stores. M-PESA's presence has expanded into rural areas, increasing customer adoption.
In Kenya alone and with over 10 million transactions monthly and outlets outnumbering the Bank Branches by six to one, and that has spurned untold criticism from the Financial sector for stricter regulation to curb the M-PESA onslaught.
Footprint: Kenya, Tanzania and coming soon, countries of Zain operations.
Chief Executive office: Michael Joseph
CELPAY
Slogan: Cell Phone wallet services
Celpay is one of the world's first Mobile Banking companies that combines mobile payments solutions for Consumers and Corporates. Celpay was awarded Wall Street Journal Europe innovation award in 2003.
Celpay provides a number of class leading and innovative solutions which enable individuals and organizations to streamline their payment processes, resulting in more efficient financial management.
Celpay, the 'cell phone wallet services,' allows registered customers to use their cell phones for merchant transactions, monthly bill payments, and fund transfer between participating phones.
Customers registering for Celpay receive a new secure SIM card, adding a menu to their cellphones that facilitates the payments and providing access to their Celpay accounts. Money can be added to Celpay accounts via transfers from a bank account, or by depositing cash or a check at a participating Celpay partner bank.
Transfers made using Celpay are free to the payer, while the payee is charged a small fee for each transaction.
Celpay provides a comprehensive mobile banking service between users, including the ability to make payments in real time, including airtime recharge. The operational model, for which Celpay received a Wall Street Journal Europe Innovation Award, is functioning in two markets, Zambia and the DRC. The service can be expanded in existing markets as well as new geographical markets in Africa and beyond.
Footprint: Zambia, DRC and Tanzania.
CEO: Lazarus Mucheje
Fundamo
Fundamo is the world's largest specialist provider of enterprise mobile financial services software. Fundamo has the experience and expertise to build the technology and support the foundation of this fledgling industry and Operating out of Cape Town,SA With 80 staffs and privately owned.
African operator MTN Group has chosen Fundamo's Mobile Wallet solution to power its MTN MobileMoney service, which will be available to a subscriber base of over 80 million users across 21 countries in Africa.
The deal, worth $9.7 million (£6.9 million), is the largest mobile banking software deal ever announced, and will bring basic financial services to MTN mobile subscribers in largely unbanked populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. The deal is an extension of the existing relationship between MTN and Fundamo, expanding MTN MobileMoney from South Africa into 20 additional countries.
MTN MobileMoney is a SIM-based version of Fundamo's Mobile Wallet Solution V3.1, that is specifically designed to meet the needs of MTN's subscriber base. Using HSM, technologies that offer ATM level security, and a PIN system that prevents sensitive information from residing on the handset, users are entirely safeguarded against theft and fraud.
The solution is also fully compliant with all banking and FICA regulations, enabling banks to log in to the system and manage the banking elements of the service, while MTN focuses on customer acquisition and retention.
The solution does not require users to setup a bank account, instead offering a variety of services, from money transfer, mobile payments and balance checking, to mobile purchases, and the ability to buy airtime in real-time. Users have the option to receive a branded MTN MobileMoney debit card that can be used to withdraw cash from ATMs.
Footprint: SA, South America, Asia, Middle East and 21 countries with MTN Operations.
CEO: Hannes Van Resburg
Zain Zap
Zain was the first mobile company to introduce phone-to-phone airtime credit transfer service in 2005 (Me2U). Currently over US$10 million worth of airtime transfers take place in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda each month.
Zain is currently the fourth largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographic presence, with a footprint in 22 countries spread across the Middle East and Africa and providing mobile voice and data services to over 60 million active customers.
Providing the most comprehensive and accessible package of mobile banking features currently available on the African continent, Zap will be initially available in Kenya and Tanzania prior to launch in Uganda. Zap represents the most comprehensive mobile banking service ever launched and will provide millions of people with access to banking for the very first time.
Zain is partnering with leading international and regional banks including Citigroup and Standard Chartered to launch Zap, which will allow Zain customers in the three countries to use their mobile phone to:
Pay bills, pay for goods and services, Receive money and send money to friends and family, Send and receive money to the bank accounts, Withdraw cash, Top up their own airtime account or top up someone else's, Send airtime to Zain customers in East Africa, Manage their bank accounts.
The Zap service will also be included as part of Zain's pioneering One Network service, meaning that customers will be able to send airtime to other Zain customers across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. One Network allows travelling customers to move across geographic borders without roaming surcharges, recharge their mobile phones with locally purchased top up cards and receive calls for free.
Zap will provide customers with increased security and flexibility, reducing the need to carry cash and ensuring payments between friends and family remain secure. A password is needed for each transaction and the service is protected through a state-of-the-art security application. Customers will also benefit from being able to access the service 24 hours a day, seven days a week through their handset, providing the convenience of accessing cash anytime, anywhere.
Zain customers can sign-up for free for the new Zap banking and payment services by completing an application form and handing it over to registered Zain agents in tens of thousands of villages, towns and cities across East Africa. Zain will then provide the customer with a mobile wallet, which will allow them to use their mobile phone in much the same way as a bank account debit card and manage their money through their handset. The service is supported on all handsets including ultra low cost handsets (ULCH) which Zain is successfully rolling out across the continent.
It will cost subscribers a flat rate of US$0.1 (KShs10) for each transaction. A minimum of $0.63 (KShs50) and a maximum of U$443 (KShs35, 000) can be transacted with a limit of 25 transactions for one subscriber in one day.
Footprint: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and countries with Zain operations.
CEO: Chris Gabriel, Zain Africa
Macalla
Macalla provides mobile payments software and has extensive experience in both the mobile and banking sectors. The platform offers the flexibility of hosted or local deployment.
The Macalla Platform provides many solutions including mobile wallet and payments. It enables subscribers to transfer cash directly from their mobile phone to the mobile wallet of family and friends nationally or internationally.
It is a secure, fast, convenient method and a cheaper way of remitting cash than using traditional means. The money received can be withdrawn at an ATM or transferred from a person or agent's mobile wallet for cash.
The Macalla Platform enables a wide range of innovative mobile financial services. All of these services can be undertaken both nationally and internationally as the Macalla Platform is multi-lingual and multi-currency. This ensures that a donor sterling transaction is provided in the recipient‘s local currency, for example. All countries legal and financial regulations are taken into account when conducting these transactions. It supports transactions such as Mobile top up, mobile banking, Remittances, cross border VAS, Bill payment, mobile wallet.
FootPrint: Southern Africa
Tagattitude:
Slogan: Securing a transaction, just a Phone call away
NSDT uses the audio channel of a mobile phone to transmit secure, encrypted, transaction data through sound waves and It enables mobile Payment and Banking, immediately, easily, and at a very low cost. Tagattitude's solutions are user friendly, simple to deploy, and do not require software downloads or hardware modifications.
In 2008, Tagattitude launched the first 100% mobile pre paid account, Tagpay.
Tagattitude runs on the Near sound data transfer technology which allows any phone to be used the same way a credit/debit card is used. The phone can be used to withdraw money from an ATM, pay at a merchant POS terminal, conduct peer to peer transfers and payments, remit money locally or internationally and pay for online goods and services.
Tagattitude has several patents and has won numerous international awards for the development of NSDT.
NSDT provides a way to bank the unbanked. With NSDT, a bank can provide banking services to the unbanked while maintaining its security requirements and profitability targets. Because NSDT requires only minuscule infrastructure outlay, a bank can serve the low end of the market profitably.
Tagattitude provides a banking application to manage NSDT virtual accounts, software to enable any ATM work on NSDT and also builds a special POS terminal that is the cheapest POS terminal in the world. For existing POS terminals, Tagattitude has an add-on to enable them work with Mobile phones as well as ATM cards.
With NSDT, a bank can open its ATM infrastructure to anyone with a mobile phone, provide banking services to millions of unbanked mobile phone subscribers, migrate everyday transactions onto its TagPOS terminals and do so cheaply profitably, securely and efficiently.
Footprints: Mali, Uganda, Nigeria
CEO : Yves Eonnet
MTN MobileMoney
Slogan: Giving you so much more
Two of the biggest brands in South Africa; MTN and Standard Bank have joined forces to bring the best of both worlds, banking and telephony.
MTN Banking offers the subscribers, the Mobile Money account which gives access to complete banking flexibility, wherever they are, whenever they wish - and easily accessible with total security using the cellphone. Simply put, the MobileMoney account is a transactional account, and the subscriber's account number is easy to remember as it will be your cellphone number, plus one extra check digit.
MTN Banking has been created as a division of Standard Bank and is a partnership between MTN and Standard Bank to offer MTN customers the ultimate in cellular connectivity and banking.
MTN MobileMoney is very convenient to use, pay for goods and services, Banking transactions and it is also, a MobileMoney Mastercard that is useable across the ATM Network.
Footprints: South Africa and other countries of MTN's operation.
Director : Dare Okoudjou
Orange Money
Slogan: Banking made simple and safe
Mobile payment becomes a reality in Côte d'Ivoire with Orange Money, a service launched in partnership with BNP Paribas, to deposit, transfer money and pay bills from mobile phone.
Through the launch of this service in the Ivory Coast, then in other countries, BNP Paribas is committed to supporting the gradual improvement of access to banking services for many low-income households that do not have access to traditional banking services.
Thus, the operator Orange announced the commercial launch, after a test phase, the initiative Orange Money in Côte d'Ivoire, in partnership with BNP Paribas. It is a set of banking services accessible from a mobile phone can draw a number of transfers of money.
The service provides deposit or withdraw money from an account Orange Money, of transfers from owners, purchase credits communications or pay bills with his phone.
Users do not need to a Bank account to make transactions on the orange Money platform where an Orange Money can be created for free. The service is secure to prevent theft or fraud, with guarantees on transactions with the regulations of the UEMOA (Economic and Monetary Union West Africa).
Footprints: Cote d Ivoire
Contacts: Marc Rennard, executive director in charge of Orange's operations in Africa, Middle-East and Asia
TXTnPAY
Slogan: Life Just got easier
Afric Xpress (AX) is an electronic payment solution provider focused on mobile payments. The company's mission is to foster electronic - based markets in Africa by turning mobile phones and computers into commercial platforms with the ultimate goal of empowering customers with security, speed, and convenience. They implement their mobile payment solutions in partnership with telecom companies and banks.
Afric Xpress uses a proven, secured and reliable payment transaction platform that is currently deployed in several countries. The robust transaction engine interact with multiple devices: mobile phones, ATMs, point of sale (retailer) systems, prepaid platforms, bill payment systems.
At the core of the system is a powerful payment engine running in a secured and highly scalable, industrial strength servers. It provides streamlined authentication, authorization, wallet and payment services to consumers and value-added business partners like leading banks, mobile carriers, utility companies, merchants, and event organizers. It serves as a major hub for businesses and consumers alike to transact and settle payments conveniently.
TxtNpay is a mobile phone-based secured payment system aimed at both banked and unbanked mobile phone customers. TxtNpay enables its users to send money to anyone with a mobile phone, pay bills, buy pre-paid airtime, check their bank balance, and purchase goods and services. Customers need to get a TxtNpay wallet before they can send money. The TxtNpay wallet is an electronic stored value account.
Customers can open a TxtNpay wallet via the website http://www.txtnpay.net/ or at an approved partner location identifiable by the TxtNpay partner logo. Wallets can be funded by buying TxtNpay electronic cash at an approved partner outlet or making a transfer from their bank account. Customers pay a one-time registration fee when they open the wallet. All charges after this will only apply for the services.
TxtNpay centres are approved partner outlets where customers can walk-in to make payments on Afric Xpress platform.
Footprints: Ghana
CEO :Nvalaye Kourouma
Monitise
Slogan: Your Money, your Mobile
Monitise is focused on the delivery of mobile banking and payment services that cater to the needs of the mass market. Monitise plc ,the leaders in mobile banking and payments, has announced that it has signed Heads of Terms with Made In Africa, the organisation which is heading east African economic growth, to launch its mobile banking and payments platform in East Africa. The proposed partnership will see the establishment of a joint venture, Monitise East Africa, which will be 51% owned by Monitise plc and 49% owned by Made In Africa.
Monitise East Africa will initially offer services in Uganda and then plans to expand into neighbouring countries, including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. The service will enable the provision of banking, payment and money transfer services by both banks and mobile networks, within the regulatory framework of each market.
The service allows multiple financial institutions to offer services on a single platform which consumers can access through a trusted interface, regardless of their choice of cellular network or handset.
This model presents advantages for all parties involved - financial institutions, carriers, card issuers and merchants alike - as everyone shares in the incremental benefits and revenues generated
Monitise's vision is the creation of a common standard worldwide for mobile banking and payments.
Footprint: Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia
CEO : Alastair Lukies
