The GSMA today announced that executives from ARM, Best Buy, China Mobile, Citigroup, ISIS, Juniper Networks, Sprint and VimpelCom will be speaking in the keynote programme at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, which will be held 27th February – 1st March 2012 at the Fira de Barcelona Montjuic in Barcelona. The GSMA also provided updates on other elements of Mobile World Congress, including App Planet, the GSMA Forum Series and the mPowered Brands programme.

“The line-up of keynote speakers announced today strengthens what is an already unparalleled conference programme,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA.  “Mobile World Congress attendees will have the opportunity to hear from many of the mobile communications industry’s most influential leaders across our four-day programme.  We’re looking forward to a very exciting event in February.”

New keynote speakers at Mobile World Congress include:

Warren East, CEO, ARM Brian Dunn, CEO, Best Buy Xi Guohua, Vice Chairman, China Mobile Vikram Pandit, CEO, Citigroup Michael Abbott, CEO, ISIS Kevin Johnson, CEO, Juniper Networks Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint Nextel Jo Lunder, CEO, VimpelCom

Previously announced Mobile World Congress 2012 speakers are:

Ben Verwaayen, CEO, Alcatel-Lucent Ralph de la Vega, President and ...

One of my first posts for this blog explored how mobile operators could exploit the network effects that characterize mobile money services by “subsidizing” early adopters—that is, by rewarding those who sign up and use a service early with deep discounts or bonuses to make up for the fact that there aren’t many other people on the network to transact with. It’s a classic pricing strategy in networked markets.

Recently, Airtel in Kenya launched a new promotion offering Airtel Money (formerly known as Zain Zap) customers free money transfers to both registered and unregistered customers. Although slated to run only for a short time, this promotion is a clear illustration of an attempt to subsidize participation in a network that has far fewer users than its competitor M-PESA, the most famous and well-established mobile money service in the world.

Such a move is risky, but not crazy. Ignacio Mas has pointed out that the online payments service PayPal lost $23 for every customer they signed up during ...

The (IDB) Inter-American Development Bank TEC-IN programme in partnership with MMU is launching today a Spanish language blog.

http://blog.tec-in.org/

This new blog aims to inform and educate audiences in the Latin-American region about the potential of new technologies for financial inclusion.  The overall objective of the Technologies for Financial Inclusion Program is to help increase and improve access of micro entrepreneurs and low-income people to financial services in Latin America and the Caribbean. Their aim is to help financial service providers in the region to improve efficiency, reduce operating costs and extend the reach of its financial products through testing and implementation of innovative technology services and solutions.

The TEC-IN Programme was created as an initiative of the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), based on the successful experience of its line of activity for the strengthening of financial institutions, and the Capital Market and Finance Division of the IDB, as part of its interest on fostering the use of technology in financial services.

We hope this new regional tool will help interested parties in the field of mobile financial services keep up to date with developments in ...

The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Salah Goss and Clara Veniard from the FSP program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

We often hear that M-PESA was able to scale quickly because it targeted an unmet need: urban to rural remittances.  Safaricom based the initial launch of the M-PESA service on the ‘send money home’ proposition because a large proportion of split families in Kenya needed a way to send money to relatives in rural areas but had few ideal options to do so.

In many markets, however, such a clear unmet need does not exist.

The Philippines is a prime example of this. Even though mobile money providers have been in the market for over ten years, they have struggled to gain market share in the face of well known and well established payment providers.  Knowledge and usage of mobile money services are low with less than 4% of users of all ...

Today GSMA is publishing a case study on ‘Giros Tigo’, Tigo’s mobile money service in Paraguay.  With over 100 live deployments around the world, Mobile Money continues to emerge as a must-have service for operators in emerging markets. However, there has been a notable absence of programs in Latin America, with the fewest deployments of any other region in the world. This seems to be changing in 2011 with MNOs in both Central and South America readying for launches. MMU visited Paraguay earlier this spring  to understand how this country emerged as a leader in Mobile Money and what lessons it offers for the region

This case study begins with a summary of the Paraguayan mobile financial ecosystem, highlighting the favourable conditions which have contributed to the development of Mobile Money. It then examines the key success factors of Tigo’s Mobile Money product such as deep market knowledge, successful distribution network, effective marketing tactics, and collaboration with an aligned bank partner.

This will be an important  year for Mobile Money in ...

The MMU team is pleased to share the proceedings from our last working group held on June 27th in Singapore.   We have attached the  presentations and descriptions from the various sessions and will be posting some videos over the next couple of weeks.

Session 1. Introduction. Seema Desai, Director of  MMU

The MMU Programme is running at full speed; this session offers an overview of what the programme has accomplished to date and what our plans are going forward.

Session 2. Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents. Paul Leishman, Manager, MMU and Guest panellist, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of  Top Image

In this session we explore the role that Top Image, a below-the-line field marketing agency, has played in developing and maintaining Safaricom’s successful M-PESA agent network. Top Image performs several key functions, including training M-PESA agents, monitoring float, and supervising activations. In this session, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of Top Image discusses the role Top Image plays and how it is strategically important.

Session 3. Consumer Insights from the Philippines. David Porteous, Director, Bankable Frontier Associates

The Philippines is known around the world ...

Over the last 12 months, the mobile money industry has doubled in size; and as the industry has grown, so has our understanding of what it takes to create a successful deployment. This  2011 report contains a selection of important best practices and insights that the MMU team have identified.  MMU strives to provide the industry with practical, actionable recommendations for how to create successful Mobile Money services.

This report catalogues our key pieces of work from the last year, including the guide to driving customer adoption of Mobile Money, and the research that we conducted into how banks and operators can succesfully  develop effective relationships to offer Mobile Money services.

In addition to these previously published resources, the annual report  features a new article by Ignacio Mas from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation titled ‘Enabling different paths to development of Mobile Money ecosystems’, in addition to a new case study focused on Tigo’s first mobile money deployment in Latin America.

The 2011 ...

The MMU Leadership Forum took place on Thursday, a day after the conclusion of the GSMA mobile money Summit in Singapore.  Building on the success of last year’s event, this invitation-only, closed door forum allowed decision makers from financial regulatory authorities and mobile operators to come together, stimulating greater understanding and collaboration between all mobile money stakeholders globally.

During the first session, “How regulations address risk in non-bank e-money institutions”, Moderator Michael Tarazi, Senior Policy Specialist at  CGAP introduced various e-money frameworks that have been put in place in the last 12-18 months and discussed how ...

Yesterday, the city of Singapore was the host of the 7th mobile money for the unbanked Working Group at the GSMA’s  Mobile Money Summit.  Over 100 participants from various organizations including MNOs, Banks, and donor agencies discussed the latest happenings in the field of MMU.   These are some of the highlights from the session.

Seema Desai, Director of the MMU programme opened the working group by stressing the importance of learning from existing best practices – embedding them well, and innovating where necessary, in addition to ensuring appropriate levels of investment due to the fact that mobile money requires high upfront capital investment to succeed.  She also encouraged stakeholders to work with regulators to create an environment in which mobile money services can reach low income customers in a sustainable way

Paul Leishman from MMU and Jennifer Barrasa, CEO of Top Image, a ...

Live from GSMA mobile money Summit in Singapore.

Telefonica has vowed to learn the lessons from the early mobile money schemes in Asia and Africa as it begins its rollout of mobile financial services across Latin America.

Speaking at the GSMA’s Mobile Money Summit this morning, the operator’s director of new businesses, Pablo Montesano, outlined how the firm was working with MasterCard to target services at 87 million customers across 12 Latin American markets where it is present. Telefonica and MasterCard created a 50/50 joint venture earlier this year to target both banked and unbanked customers across the region.

“We have learnt some ‘do’s and don’ts’ from the early experiences [in Asia and Africa], which have saved us maybe three or four years of making mistakes,” said Montesano. “Mobile money is not just a new service, it’s a new business. ...