Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 66

INDUSTRY WATCH: BANKING AND FINANCE sellers of goods and services, and to redeem deposits for cash. It uses a network of agents that includes airtime resellers and retail outlets acting as banking agents. FCG’s SAWAPay solution therefore makes it possible for people in remote, rural areas without access to formal financial services and the unbanked in urban environments to receive cash directly from relatives in the diaspora. The service is free to customers. Building the app Alan Osoro, FCG Managing Director K enyan start-up, First Choice Global (FCG), broke new ground in the financial services industry by providing an instant, free, money remittance service to Africans working internationally. For most of FCG’s customers, conventional banking facilities or money transfer systems were prohibitively expensive. The transfer process took days and, frequently, recipients of the transfers either had no bank account or needed to spend already limited resources getting to a bank to access their cash. FCG resolved these issues by creating an app, SawaPay, that can be linked to a credit card or bank account in the United States. The person wanting to transfer money simply enters the recipient’s phone number and an amount and presses send. The money is received in Kenya in seconds and can be sent to either a bank account or a mobile money account such as M-Pesa. On the Kenyan end, FCG’s solution uses a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing, and microfinancing service. It allows users to deposit money into an account stored on their phones to send money using PIN-secured SMS text messages to other users, including 66 INTELLIGENTCIO The SawaPay app was created in-house; Alan Osoro, FCG Managing Director, says the company’s priorities when beginning this process included: “App and data security, scalability, UX design, ease of use and the ability to produce meaningful data and analytics.” In order to create an app that was appropriately designed and tailored for their users, the company studied behaviour of Kenyan diaspora in America to fully comprehend the existing needs and frustrations that were currently not being addressed. Initial designs were shared with a test group and redesigned following feedback, with a focus on making the interface both visually appealing and intuitive. “Our objective is to become a global leader in the provision of money transfer solutions to the largely neglected emerging markets by creating a world-class money remittance platform.” FCG continues to gather data and analytics from the app to ensure optimum ease of use and accessibility for customers. Osoro claims the ability to gather this data from the app is beneficial for helping the company to better understand its user demographics (to assist in market intelligence to better concentrate marketing efforts); customer behaviour (including time spent completing a transaction to help ‘measure’ user experience) and the ability to understand the key factors that differentiate their customers. Sourcing the cloud FCG’s challenge on setup was finding a cloud provider willing to support an unknown product created by a start-up and serving an untested market. The company also needed a cloud provider trusted by the global financial services industry, that had a local presence in Kenya, and, specifically, could guarantee data sovereignty in America where FCG had developed partnerships with currency exchange firms. “Our objective is to become a global leader in the provision of money transfer solutions to the largely neglected emerging markets by creating a world- class money remittance platform,” Osoro says. “To achieve this, we need seamless integration with financial services partners across the globe and, therefore, a cloud provider who can provide a scalable, secure, and cost-effective solution that ensures delivery of our service in the shortest possible time.” Osoro explains that the company had multiple requirements when it came to sourcing a cloud provider, these included: data security, 24/7 support services, scalability, system availability, resilience to cyberattacks, ability to integrate with other cloud services, data ownership and locally available infrastructure. “Dimension Data was the only cloud provider that met all these criteria as well as being able to pinpoint exactly where our partners’ data resides. So, it gives our partners the confidence to work with us. At the same time, Dimension Data is the only global cloud provider with a presence on the www.intelligentcio.com