Bringing further form, shape and size to the African MVT market is clearly an important step. The speakers and attendees at MMT Africa are working hard to identify and develop many angles of the MVT opportunity. This conference has been an interesting blend of old and new, at which we have seen several key themes:

1.       Recognition of the importance of incorporating customer needs (and better still, customer goals) into the design of a product or service offering – this includes understanding the value of a brand for agents and consumers, e.g., the extent to which the brand conveys trust. This extends to having a thorough understanding of the unique conditions in any given country.

 

2.       Near-universal vendor talk about agnosticism/inter-operability among mobile operators and/or banks, and bringing regulators fully on board (“make them feel like it was their company/idea,” was the direction given by Michael Joseph, CEO of Safaricom). Everything is called a platform at this point:  from an MNO-developed custom network platform to vendors with white-label offerings.

 

3.       Enormous  estimates of market opportunity for MMT with as yet emerging actual implementations/launches

 

4.       The importance of going beyond “just” domestic remittances, P2P transfers, or any one of many potential financial services, and rather target the agglomeration of many services as a key part of the offering

 

a.       Examples from both Safaricom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap about services their products are or will shortly be including, like: cardless ATMs, utilities or other bill payments, medical insurance, charitable donations, auto related payments, pharmaceutical distribution, bulk labor force payments, community payment programs (such as village water pumps), and even horse betting.

 

5.       The dilemma about profits – whether to accept some direct and hard to measure indirect revenues, from customer retention for example, as “enough” while true profits may be elusive for some time

 

a.       Repeated acknowledgement that this is costly to implement, carries a long-term wait for returns, ”it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” and when returns do come, they will not be on the level of “banking profits” (although later FNB (First National Bank in South Africa with a mobile banking product) said their mobile banking is profitable)

 

b.      It is likely that in much of Africa’s markets (as in other developing/price sensitive markets) margins will need to be wrung from improvements to the efficiency of the MVT transfer process, rather than on the back of the consumer through fees.

 

6.       The difficulties of the last mile and many possible solutions (not one of which, on its own, is likely to be sufficient to overcome the issues)

 
a.       Urban / rural divides are tough on liquidity – looking to existing cash holding points such as MFI loan repayment collections, banks, merchants, airtime resellers, even existing informal transfer points that could be converted

 
b.      Difficulties around agent recruitment – incentives that may work like cash per sign-up, using a “guerilla” community-oriented salesforce (a la WizzKids), education and training (repeated again and again to capture ever-changing workforces)

 

c.       Importance of the agent network – e.g., community members as agents, to minimize or eliminate intimidation of consumers, as compared to many common perceptions of the unbanked about bank hall experiences.

“If you can’t beat ‘em…”