KISS

Instead of learning the reasons why Mobile Money has become successful in other places and building on that to make the solutions better, we have continuously gone ahead to mix all sorts of terminologies and expertise which has put the customers needs on the back seat as we hold events and preach complexities in Mobile Money Transfer. We need to stop and take a deep breath as to why we put the titles of Mobile Money Transfer Experts. What is our aim? what is truly financial inclusion of the unbanked and semi banked? What is Mobile Money Transfer? Mobile Means in my village queens english something that can move from one place to another…Money can be anything from cowrie shells to Euros and dollars and Transfer means from one place to another. Why is it then that Mobile Money Transfer which then means movement of value from one place to another through a mobile device is sometimes called Mobile Banking, and all other fancy names. Lets get real, a financially excluded person has no blackberry, No HTC sensation, the dont care about NFC and android and all those things that we know about. All they want is to stop hiding their money under the ground in a coffee tin, be able to feel financially included somehow and finally able to do business like any other financially included persons. If your passion is financial inclusion for unbanked Africans and the world over….then I am not saying that we stop talking about mobile banking…lets first take mobile money to the unbanked …get them to realise that e-value equals cash and then move on to agency banking and then mobile banking. You dont start feeding yams to a new born child! lets get that farmer in Northern Nigeria to do a deposit on his china twinsim low end phone, then let him send his brother some money in Lagos to clear his new car at the port, as we watch his transactions and e-value grow in his wallet…. we meet him again through ATL activations and tell him that he no longer have to keep his money in the mobile wallet but now we can link him up to a bank where he can push his money everyday after a deposit but still be able to access it anytime he wants….. what have we done?? mobile money transition to mobile banking and then that agent where he keeps depositing cash …becomes an agent of the bank….then the farmer in Nothern Nigeria does not have to travel any distance to get financial inclusion. He will sell his fruits and livestock…visit the agent, do a deposit, and push the money to the bank account… the same agent ( who is now a bank agent) will help him get a loan to increase his livestock…..Why am i going into details? to show my fellow experts that its all simple… Its a win win situation…The bank eventually gets the float value from the Agent, The agent earns commissions, the bank reaches unbanked customers without having to build a brick and motar branch, the customer has his money in a bank account or in his wallet…This is how Equity Bank in kenya is collecting the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid…. and folks lets stop Boardroom B*(*&&^T and get down to bringing financial inclusion to unbanked people… Lets not bombard the customers who need financial inclusion with high end java versions that I take hours to download! lets keep it simple. Yours Truly Cathy