- Title: KENYA: Top mobile money transfer professionals meet in Nairobi
- Date: 12th May 2011
- Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF A MAN DOING AN MPESA ATM TRANSACTION
- Embargoed: 27th May 2011 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Kenya, Kenya
- Country: Kenya
- Topics: Finance
- Reuters ID: LVA4ZGRL68TT469ODQC8YA6ZFNI9
- Story Text: A two-day Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) Africa expo came to a close in Nairobi on Thursday (May 12) after participants discussed growing the service continent-wide and finding new ways to make it more valuable for users.
The event, dubbed the mobile money transfer industry's top event on the continent drew more than 400 top industry experts, including service providers, banks, and technology vendors.
Mobile banking is expected to grow into a 22 US billion industry across Africa by 2015 on the back of skyrocketing cellphone use and growing demand for financial services, according to consultancy Juniper Research.
"We are starting to have more and more people having access to mobile phones, but they still don't have access to basic bank accounts and with the mobile phone, it is possible to actually have banking services and with banking services that's huge for the population as you can actually get to start saving money and you can save a lot of time obviously like you see here in Kenya," said MMT expo organiser, Elizabeth Berthe.
Mobile money systems are commonly used in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. Even China has been quick to implement systems in mobile banking.
But M-Pesa, a service engineered by mobile network provider Safaricom, in Kenya is seen is one of the most successful models in the market.
The service is hugely popular mainly because it does not require users to have a bank account.
M-Pesa account holders can buy electronic funds at an agent and send it to any mobile phone user in the country, who can then redeem it for conventional cash at an M-Pesa agent or partnering bank ATM.
Recently the company, 40 percent owned by Britain's Vodafone, launched a partnership with global money transfer service, Western Union, making it possible for subscribers to receive money from anywhere in the world.
Participants at the expo in Nairobi said plans to make a unique Africa service that could ease movement of funds within the continent through MMT were discussed.
"One of the unique situations is that in Nigeria, we import flowers from Holland and I hear that Kenya exports flowers to Holland. So why doesn't Nigeria import flowers from Kenya. We believe that its because of this inability to transfer or do E-commerce, move money easily across African countries that this problem arises," said Kelechi Dozie, MD for Pay4me, a billing solution company in Nigeria.
"So hopefully with partnerships with other Kenyan providers or other African providers we can create a unique African solution to solve this problem one of the challenges most African countries have is unfortunately the reliance and dependence to the likes of Western union and Money Gram," said Dozie.
Phone operators in Africa and the Middle East are rushing to get ahead in the mobile banking and mobile money transfer game, a market likely to encompass nearly a billion people by 2014. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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