Highlights and Headlines: December 2010

In our last post for 2010, let’s recap what we’ve been discussing and share some headlines from around the globe.

I blogged about the launch of Orange Money’s service in Kenya. This has been the subject of many articles and blog posts online, and Mobile Money Africa linked to an interesting take on the launch:

The future of money transfer is here. So runs the latest prime time TV advert “introducing Orange Money”. To the casual Kenyan TV viewer, this sounds just like another fancy advertisement pushing just another new product from a local firm or consortium. But to those more informed about the cutting edge and the next level of both modern banking and computing, this advert could herald the future not only of money transfer in Kenya, but of the economy as a whole.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has been busy lately, issuing licenses to several mobile money service providers, including Paga, eTranzact and United Bank for Africa:

According to the EFInA Access to Financial Services in Nigeria 2010 Survey, Nigeria lags behind South Africa, Botswana, and Kenya in terms of the percentage of the population who are financially served. The growth in financially served population in many of these markets is mainly attributable to their mobile money offerings.

Chris Bold blogged about international remittances over the mobile channel, and Axis Bank in India announced a domestic “remittance pilot” with IDEA Cellular.

While everyone may know M-PESA quite well, Claire Alexandre guest blogged about things we might not have known about the service, while Mark Pickens shared some of the new innovations happening in Kenya. Maha Khan from the MMU at GSMA wrote an interesting blog about the use of mobile money in post-conflict enviornments, such as Afghanistan:

There is a lot of optimism about the use of mobiles in the peace-building sector and in particular mobile money bringing financial services to the poor. While there is widespread reach of mobile phones in post-conflict countries—Afghanistan has 13 million mobile phone subscribers—is mobile money the silver bullet?

And speaking of challenging environments, an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof discussed some of the benefits that mobile money could bring to Haiti. But more on Haiti in the New Year.