Mobile Money - The Till is the ATM

Initiating a remote payment from a mobile phone is trivial. The most basic of handsets can utilise SMS or USSD access channels to initiate the payment process. In other words roughly 4 billion people around the world can potentially initiate a mobile payment. The question is: how does the recipient convert electronic money into physical bills?

Traditional cash withdrawal channels such as ATMs and bank branch networks (which, globally, number around 1.5 and 0.5 million respectively) cannot cope with cash withdrawals triggered by mobile payment instructions. An alternative money dispenser should step in to cover for the increased demand.

An unlikely contender to the ATM throne may be the humble cash till with the help of Point-of-Sales terminals. Cheap, lightweight and occupying limited real estate on the shop counter, the POS device is a perfect complement to the traditional till, eliminating the need for expensive automated cash dispensers. When merchants cash out through POS terminals the amount of cash held on their premises is reduced and the risk to pilfering is diminished. This system also makes full use of existing clearing and settlement instruments built by banks over several decades.

Insofar as mobile payments go, the cash till may be the next ATM.

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