Technically Speaking
vritti
March 2018
17
In the second approach, which we have
seen in countries like Egypt and Jordan,
Globally mobile money providers and regulators
have followed two different approaches to
domestic mobile money interoperability.
In the first approach, which is implemented
in countries like Tanzania and Madagascar,
we have seen,
mobile money providers coming
together and establishing bilateral
agreements to enable domestic
money transfer interoperability .
In Tanzania, in June 2014, Airtel (offering
Airtel Money), Tigo (offering Tigo Pesa) and
Zantel (offering Ezy Pesa) collaborated to
enable direct money transfer between
mobile money wallets of these services.
Vodacom (offering M-Pesa) joined the trio
in February 2016, completing the domestic
money transfer interoperability between the
major providers in Tanzania. In March 2018,
TTCL (offering TTCL PESA) and Tigo
agreed on enabling mobile money
interoperability. Similarly, in Madagascar,
Orange (offering Orange Money), Airtel
(offering Airtel Money) and Telma (offering
mVola) launched money transfer interoperability
in September 2016. All mobile money providers
have formed bilateral agreements with other
providers and the settlement happens
independently between two parties.
the regulator provides a switching
infrastructure and mandates all
mobile money providers to join it.
In Jordan in 2014, Central Bank introduced
JoMoPay, a real-time payment switch for
processing and switching mobile financial
and non-financial transactions in STP
(Straight Through Processing) basis and
routing messages between multiple mobile
payment service providers. Multiple mobile
money and mobile banking services such as
Umniah Mahfazti, Zain Cash and Bank of
Jordan Mobile banking have connected to
the JoMoPay switch. JoMoPay has also
integrated with other payment systems in
Jordan such as eFawateercom, Jordan’s bill
presentment and payment solution, the RTGS
(Real Time Gross Settlement System) and
JoNet, the national ATM switch (Figure 1) .
These integrations and use of switching
infrastructure extends interoperability
beyond P2P money transfer to other use
cases such as bill payments, merchant
payments and ATM cash-in and cash-out.
In Egypt, mobile money and mobile banking
services such as Orange Money, Vodafone
Cash, Etisalat Cash (Flous), NBE PhoneCash,
Banque Misr BM Wallet and CIB SmartWallet
have connected to National Switch (123 brand)
facilitating interoperability. The interoperability
extends beyond P2P money transfers to
other usecases like merchant payments.
Ghana is also adopting a switch-based
interoperability approach.