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GSMA makes progress on unbanked initiative
Alex Leslie - Jun 25, 11:39 AM
The GSM Association told delegates this morning that it has made significant progress in both NFC standardisation and its Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) initiative. In an update on the association’s two-year old ‘Pay-Buy-Mobile’ project, the GSMA’s Nav Bains cited a key breakthrough in the adoption of the Single Wire Protocol (SWP) standard, which was standardised by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) recently. Bains said that adoption of SWP – which provides a standardised way for a SIM card to communicate with an NFC chip in a mobile phone – will allow handset vendors to rollout NFC-enabled handsets to the mass market and achieve economies of scale. Nokia, the world’s largest handset vendor, plans to launch its first SWP/NFC device in 3Q09, Bains said. He said the ultimate goal was to make SWP/NFC a default feature in mobile devices. “The key players are now looking at the same technical solution and we expect to see great things happening in the next 6 to 12 months.” He added that there were now 52 mobile operators signed up to the Pay-Buy-Mobile project with pilots up and running in 11 countries.
Meanwhile, the GSMA’s Gavin Krugal provided delegates with an update on the MMU initiative, which was launched at Mobile World Congress in February in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He said that MMU Fund has already identified three mobile operator-led mobile money projects in Africa that will receive funding from the initiative to be announced soon. The investment in the three projects represents about 20 percent of the total MMU fund.
According to new research published today by the GSMA and CGAP, the microfinance research centre, the number of ‘unbanked’ customers that own a mobile phone will grow to 1.7 billion by 2012 from around 1 million currently. The study found that by 2012 mobile money has the potential to deliver up to US$5 billion in direct revenues for mobile operators. Krugal noted in his address that mobile money customers are now accounting for 74 percent higher ARPU than non-users.
The GSMA also announced today that the launch of a new MMU award for the most significant mobile money project targeted at the unbanked. The first award will be presented at Mobile Asia Congress in November.
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