16
vritti
March 2018
Mobile money providers have put in significant
amount of effort in integrating their services
with banks. Today, a considerable number of
mobile money providers are integrated with
banks offering bank-to-wallet and wallet-to-
bank transfers. According to GSMA, December
2017, 9.2% of incoming transactions were
bank -to-wallet and 5.3% of outgoing transac-
tions were wallet-to-bank. Mobile money
providers have also enabled international
interoperability between wallets. For example,
a consumer can transfer money directly
from Orange Money wallet in Botswana to
EcoCash wallet in Zimbabwe.
While mobile money providers have been
open to integrating their services and platforms
with banks and cross-border mobile money
providers, they have not exhibited the same
enthusiasm while integrating with other
mobile money providers within their own
country (domestic interoperability). Currently
domestic interoperability is limited only to
15 countries with interoperability agreements
in place between domestic mobile money
providers. These countries include India,
Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Tanzania,
Thailand, Bolivia, Egypt, Philippines and
Jordan. However, domestic mobile money
interoperability will gain impetus in 2018
with Kenya, Ghana and Zimbabwe planning
to launch it. These 3 countries are amongst
the top 8 African countries where more than
40% of the adult population uses mobile money.
The implementation of domestic mobile money
interoperability in these countries will encourage
the regulators and mobile money providers
in other countries to adopt interoperability.
Technically Speaking