16
vritti
Mobilution
May 2017
MOBILE MONEY
A DECADE AND STILL GOING STRONG
It would be an understatement to say that
mobile money has come a long way, from the
2007 launch of M-Pesa in Kenya. two-thirds of low-and-middle-income
countries, as of December 2016. Quite a
jump, this!
To illustrate, as per GSMA’s State of the
Industry Report on Mobile Money: The Decade
Edition 2006-2016, a survey undertaken by
the Financial Access Initiative in 2009
revealed that 2.5 billion adults globally
were unbanked. Cut to 2016-as per the
same report, mobile money is available in This theme, needless to say, took centre
stage at the MWC this year. Various stake
holders-from the bigwigs to those just about
starting their journey-announced ambitious
plans to enhance their mobile money portfolios.
The end game? To ensure an optimum
customer experience and continuity of
mobile money services, of course!
VISA AND MASTERCARD
TAKE THE LEAD
It is an interesting fact that when it comes
to mobile payments, MasterCard and Visa
can't be too far from the discussions.
Needless to say, MWC was no exception.
Visa chose this platform to announce its
plans of expanding its global payment
capabilities. The finance major's mVisa QR-
based payments service is set to expand
its global footprint. The aim is simple-to
provide simple and secure point-of-sale
and e-commerce transactions. The
company challenged start-ups to bring
digital payments into the realm of Internet
of Things, with the expansion of its
Everywhere initiative to Europe.