In January, an analyst colleague of mine at Juniper Research commented on the mobile banking market in a blog entry entitled “Mobile Banking Out of Africa”. Well, this week, I am going to do the same for the mobile payments market as two particular items of interest in this space caught my attention recently.
The first one you could hardly miss, and that was Barclays’ announcement of their P2P money service called “Pingit” – it has been very widely reported and almost universally acclaimed. This service enables users to receive and send money to anyone with a UK current account simply by using their mobile number – eliminating the need to share bank details. On top of a very catchy name (it almost makes you want to give your money away!) Barclays’ seem to have got everything right and have clearly learnt the lessons from other money transfer services. Simplicity is key and Pingit has certainly achieved that, together with the other key attribute – ubiquity (Pingit will work across the entire UK banking structure in March, but that’s not long to wait). Where did they learn these lessons? More than likely “Out of Africa”, where such services have been mainstream for years now.
The other announcement – equally impressive in my view, but hardly reported at all, was that from Warid Congo of a new mobile payments service called “Mobicash” which “overcomes the challenges of cashless payment by using multi-factor authentication mechanisms (NSDT, fingerprint, NFC and Voice biometric) technology”. Now that’s a really comprehensive portfolio of authentication options for your mobile payment – and fulfils another key attribute of a mobile payments service – security. Where does it come from? “Out of Africa”!
Tags: Barclays Bank, mobile payments, NFC, Warid
There is no doubt that Africa paved the way for money transfer service (due to narrow banking base there) but”Pingit” has definitely taken mobile payments a few big steps further from the current service offerings in Africa;
- MPESA is not linked to subscriber bank accounts; Pingit is directly linked to bank accounts.
- MPESA money sending is tied to subscribers having a mobile phone service with one particular network operator; Pingit is available to all mobile phone subscribers (in UK, currently).
- MPESA money withdrawl is linked to MPESA outlets only, Pingit money withdrawal is possible wherever you can withdraw money from your bank account.
[...] On February 21, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Mobile, Technology Juniper Research http://www.juniperresearch.com/analyst-xpress-blog/2012/02/20/mobile-payments-%E2%80%93-out-of-afric… by David Snow on February 20th, [...]
I think it will help people especially on mobile payments if there is indeed a great factor in regards of bank location in a certain place. Thanks for sharing this very interesting information!