[governance] Web payments

Wed Apr 17 11:17:42 EDT 2013

No question McTim mobiles and mobile money is having a huge and widespread
(and increasing) impact in Sub-Saharan Africa and among the poor globally
(Bangladesh is particularly interesting here because of the competition
driven very very low cost of mobile service).

And various sources of research including the World Bank are providing us
with reams of data on how that is being accomplished.  However, in some
recent research I've been doing in Sub-Saharan Africa I've been finding that
the distribution of mobile service (and of course, associated with that
would be mobile money) is highly highly skewed towards the urban and away
from the rural as an example; and the actual use/accessibility of mobiles is
locally very dependent on the cost of actual service which as Carlos Afonso
noted, is in turn very much dependent on local circumstances (degree of
competition among carriers for example).

As I already mentioned two SSA countries--South Africa because of historical
circumstances with respect to national telecom infrastructures and Kenya (I
think largely because of local political/historical regulatory circumstances
and because the various donors particularly the World Bank have chosen it as
the "poster child", but on this I could be wrong) have much broader
distribution of access into rural areas, but at least in South Africa the
actual distribution/use of service is similarly highly skewed between richer
and poorer because of extremely high (though decreasing) service costs. (I'm
not directly familiar with the service/costing situation in Kenya although I
have seen anecdotal information that the situation there is similar--as
referred to in my blogpost referencing Kibera).

It is in part a glass half full/half empty situation, but my original cavil
was that while it is extremely easy to get access to the information you
(and Adam for example) are quoting including or especially from the World
Bank it seems much much more difficult to get information on the half empty
glass i.e. service among the unserviced--those rural areas, the very poor,
those in high cost service areas and so on.  Making global (or national)
public policy solely to benefit/enable the interests/activities of the half
full group which seems to be the overall direction of those currently
concerned with these matters should I think, be something for the marketers
and the service suppliers and not something for example, for CS. (I looked
in vain for detailed information on the currently unserviced in SSA but
could find none in the midst of the stacks of World Bank reports on the
latest "apps" and services for the serviced e.g. mPesa (of course, I may
have missed something so if anyone has anything current on actual service
distribution both infrastructure access/and actual use in SSA I would be
most sincerely grateful). In this regard the more or less complete absence
of any attention being paid to the non-serviced at the recent WSIS +10 is
particularly indicative I believe.
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/making-happytalk-in-paris-disneylan
d-and-the-wsis-10-review/

And yes, among the desireable policy initiatives those concerned with these
issues should be promoting, is increased competition in areas where that is
not currently active (cf. Carlos Afonso's discussion of Brazil) but also,
recognizing that in many  instances there may be no "business case" for
providing services, and particularly in situations of oligopoly (as in many
parts of SSA) and there is a need for active policy/programme intervention
by whoever is able, to ensure that some degree of access (to the benefits of
mobiles/the Internet including to online banking service) is universally
available.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of McTim
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 5:33 AM
To: Carlos A. Afonso
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Ian Peter; Norbert Bollow
Subject: Re: [governance] Web payments

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 8:11 AM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca> wrote:
> Yes, this is a good sign that a significant amount of money is being 
> transacted via mobile, but this does not imply a corresponding 
> significant amount of people are doing so.

http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2013/03/14/mobile
-money-users-overtake-traditional-bank-accounts/

"Transactions carried out through mobile financial services (MFS) totalled
UGX11.7 trillion (USD4.374 billion) in 2012, up from UGX3.75 trillion in
2011, the Daily Monitor quotes the deputy governor of the Bank of Uganda as
saying. The number of wireless subscribers using the services increased to
an estimated 8.9 million from 2.8 million, tapping into Uganda's large
unbanked population and surpassing the number of traditional bank accounts,
of which there are around 3.6 million. Despite concerns regarding
MFS-related fraud, South African-backed cellco MTN Uganda claimed to have
3.5 million active mobile money users at end-2012 which accounted for 20
million transactions over the course of the year."
>
> All this to keep in mind that mobile is not a magic wand which will 
> solve all connectivity issues and will be the answer to true universal 
> broadband access

never said it was.  However one can't dispute that mobile connectivity has
connected hundreds of millions of folk, despite the limitations.

--
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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