FortySouth

So this evening I get this email from Afripayments in my inbox:

I once used their online money transfer service for a low dollar transfer and while they did have the lowest transaction fees per transfer I’ve encountered, I wasn’t too impressed with the customer service – I initially had to jump through hoops just to get the sum sent. At the time they had just launched so I thought I’d give the service some time to “mature” before take-two. In the meantime, I’ve stuck with Moneygram which I’ve found to be quite reliable.

Apparently the Kenyan Government was probing alleged fraud in the payments system that is a joint venture between Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) and Afripayments. PCK acts as the front-end interface with customers while Afripayments runs the backend software and infrastructure, with a revenue-sharing model of 20%/80% respectively.

PostaPay has been losing a lot of money in fees for transactions that actually didn’t take place. So I’m anxiously awaiting the audit report, but I suspect that the outcome was nontoopleasing and with PCK being a parastatal, the Government probably decided to cut its losses and shatter the service to smithereens.

What I’d really love to see is if Safaricom would expand its payment transfer system, MPesa, to a global scale.

The interest in mobile banking in developing countries has seen an exponential increase in recent years.

Why? Because, especially among African nations, it represents perhaps the perfect business opportunity – the confluence of the ubiquity of mobile phone subscribers and the fact that many yet do not own bank accounts. That notwithstanding, there’s the increasing need for financial transactions to occur in a secure, real-time and low-cost fashion.

To this end, the GSM Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are working together under the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Program to “fund regulatory and market research to help overcome some of the barriers of providing these services and demonstrate the business case for serving this market”.

I think once such a business case is made to banking regulators, the process of approval for mobile service providers to provide these services may be hastened because they won’t feel like they’re groping in the dark in this new policy area.

Once the regulatory hurdles are surmounted, the onus will be on mobile network operators to provide value-added services and focus on service delivery.