Thirsty Rock

At the end of 2010 44 mobile money initiatives were operational in twenty two (22) countries in Africa. English-speaking countries accounted for 75% of total deployments with East and Southern Africa contributing twenty six (26) installations. Only ten countries (almost entirely from East and Southern Africa) were host to two or more MM operators implying limited competition on the continent. Fundamo , working with MTN , is a significant technology provider powering at least ten sites in 9 countries. Adoption of mobile money services is high in English speaking countries in Africa. Why?

Stuck with your JPOS-EE database installation? Beanshell dies at launch or fails to resolve class names? The small Java utility below (written in the Eclipse environment) may just be the answer to your woes. Before you dive into Java code you may want to complete the following steps: i. Download EasyPHP (WAMP server) and create a database called jposee . ii. Start mysql and apache servers Start Eclipse. Create a new Java Project: File->New->Project . Select " Java " in the category list. Select " Java Project " in the project list. Click " Next ". Enter a project name into the Project name field, for example, " JPOS-dbmaker ". Click " Finish "--It will ask you if you want the Java perspective to open. (You do.) Create a new Java class: Click the " Create a Java Class " button in the toolbar. (This is the icon below ...

One in very five humans has a phone in their pocket. Yet only five companies in the world account for the GSM chipsets found in all GSM phones around the globe. Of these, more than half are powered by technologies developed by one company: ST/Ericsson. Such is the death grip on the mobile handset market by a handful of companies that there is little incentive to innovate around the GSM chip, the baseband processor. Any innovation would meet with some steep challenges. For starters, programming information (API) for the chip is a very closely guarded secret . This secrecy guarantees licensing fees to the G5 for the GSM protocol stack software. Hardly surprising that smart phones, which boast a second (more 'open') application processor, enjoy more creativity than their drab cousins the feature phones. Closed proprietary GSM hardware implementations could also be responsible for the rapid loss in market share to the new kids on the block - Android and the iPhone.

Nam Yong, CEO of the third largest mobile phone manufacturer LG Electronics, offered his resignation 17 Sept 2010 barely a week after the exit of Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. The two executives are victims of a combined onslaught from Apple and Google. The latter grew its market share by 1500% selling almost 11 million handsets by Q2 2010 from only 0.8 million in Q2 2009. Android is on target to unseat the Blackberry (Research in Motion) from the #2 slot by the close of 2010.

Back in 2004, NTT DoCoMo introduced the first mobile wallet. DoCoMo is a spin-off of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), the largest telecommunications carrier in Japan. Named Osaifu-Keitai which literally means 'Wallet Mobile', the wallet is based on the FeliCa integrated circuit developed by Sony. FeliCa is a smart card and is the de facto card standard in Japan. NTT DoCoMo fully integrates the chip into phone handsets thereby extending mobile device functionality to include payments. The chip communicates with contact-less readers such as POS equipment, parking meters and train ticketing kiosk to effect payment. While Osaifu-Keitai is a product of bringing together an array of players, other wallets are sponsored by either a bank, operator or a combination of both. Mobile operators typically favour SIM-based wallets. All the functionality is embedded onto the Subscriber Identity Module. The application is pre-loaded or provisioned over the air and the database is main...

A cursory look at mobile banking systems launched in the last five years provides interesting insights. The products on offer range from bank led initiatives such as Wizzit (South Africa), through 50/50 bank-operator JVs of which MobileMoney (Standard Bank, MTN - South Africa) is a good example to operator centric solutions led by SMART Money (Smart Communications - Philippines) and M-Pesa (Safaricom - Kenya). Although information around subscriber numbers, revenue per user and transaction volumes is generally unavailable there are rough estimates in the public domain. How do the numbers stack up? The top performers in terms of subscription are M-Pesa (7 mil), SMART (7 mil) and G-Cash at 1.5 million. All three services are bank agnostic. At the bottom of the table are the bank-led and JV solutions: Wizzit (200k est.) and MobileMoney (150k, 2007 estimate). Why is there such a staggering difference in subscriber numbers between bank-led solutions and those underpinned by MNOs? One...

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 term...