Mobile-money services
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: August 27, 2012
Mobile money would transform even more lives in poor countries if regulators got out of the way.
Aug 25th 2012 | from the print edition
IN 2007 Safaricom, the biggest mobile operator in Kenya, launched M-PESA, a service that allows money to be sent and received using mobile phones. It has since signed up 15m users, is used by 70% of the adult population and has become central to the economy: around 25% of Kenya’s GNP flows through it.
Similar schemes have had some success elsewhere. More than 120 mobile operators now offer mobile-money services of various kinds, and another 90 will soon join them. There has been a particular push in east Africa. Yet in many poor countries where mobile money should be flourishing, it isn’t.
A bank in your pocket
Mobile-money services are especially useful in developing countries. A worker in the city can send money to his family in the village without having to waste a day travelling on a rickety bus. Indeed, he can pay his family’s household bills directly from his phone. It is safer too: nobody wants to carry wads of currency on public transport.
Mobile money also gives its users—many of whom are poor and have no access to banks—a way to save small amounts of money. A World Bank report found that M-PESA users are a third more likely to have some savings than their peers. Mobile transactions are more traceable than cash, making it harder for corrupt officials to embezzle undetected. And lately Kenya has discovered a further benefit: the success of M-PESA has provided the foundation for a group of start-ups in Nairobi that are building new products and services on top of it (see article).
However Kenya’s success has yet to be replicated much elsewhere. More than half of all the world’s mobile-money transactions are handled by Safaricom. Mobile money is popular in one or two chaotic countries, such as Sudan and Somalia, but barely used in most places where it could do immense good, including India and China.
Not all countries need mobile money, of course. Rich countries, with cash machines, credit cards and internet banking, have little use for it. And among developing countries, not all have Kenya’s specific mix of circumstances. Safaricom had a dominant market share when it launched M-PESA, giving the service a large base of potential customers. But there is also a bad reason why mobile money has failed to spread. In Kenya the government took the enlightened approach of allowing M-PESA to go ahead, rather than tying Safaricom in red tape. Many of the poor countries that would most benefit from mobile money seem intent on keeping its suppliers out—mainly by insisting they should be regulated like banks.
This is often a mixture of laziness and turf protection: if the president’s cousin owns the country’s main bank, he may not rush to let cheap mobile-money systems into his country. Nobody disputes the idea that financial transactions need to be monitored. But there is also, equally clearly, a rather big difference between a cheap money-transfer system like M-PESA and a full lending bank like Citicorp.
The security worries are usually fairly easily dealt with. Placing a limit on the size of transactions and the total balance that can be stored reduces the risk of mobile money being used to launder cash. Accordingly, there is no need to apply the strict “know your customer” rules required in banking. Most of what a government needs to know is to be found in the mobile-phone contract every customer signs.
Another concern is consumer protection: dodgy operators could filch cash. One compromise, which has been adopted in several African countries, is to get operators to form partnerships with banks. An alternative, tried in the Philippines, is to let mobile operators run their services unhindered, provided regulators are given unfettered access behind the scenes.
Indeed, rather than fighting mobile money, governments should use it themselves. Afghanistan pays policemen and other officials their wages using the local version of M-PESA. Tanzania accepts tax payments by mobile-money services. They can also be used to deliver welfare or aid payments. Other countries should watch and learn.
from the print edition | Leaders
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2012
避免洗錢？行動錢包有助窮國發展
2012-08 Web only 作者：經濟學人
2007年，肯亞最大的行動電信商Safaricom推出了M-PESA服務，讓用戶可以透過手機傳送並收取金錢；目前使用者已達1500萬人，用戶涵括全國70%的成人，也成為肯亞經濟的中心。
類似機制在其他地方也相當成功，目前已有120家電信商提供各種行動錢包服務，另外90家也即將加入此行列。不過，在許多行動錢包理當可以開花結果的窮國，卻沒有這樣的服務。
行動錢包服務在發展中國家格外有用，在城市工作的人不必舟車勞頓，就可以把錢送回家鄉，甚至還可以直接用手機支付家裡的帳單。行動錢包的使用者大多貧窮且無法申請銀行帳戶，因此行動錢包也有小額存款功能。
不過，肯亞的成功經驗尚未複製到其他地方。全球超過半數的行動錢包交易都是由Safaricom處理，行動錢包在蘇丹、索馬利亞等一、二個混亂國家相當受歡迎，但在大部分非常適合行動錢包的地方卻不見蹤影，例如印度和中國。
當然，不是所有地方都需要行動錢包，例如富有國家，也不是每個發展中國家都擁有和肯亞相同的條件。
許多可以受益於行動錢包的窮國，似乎並不希望行動錢包出現。這通常起因於懶惰和捍衛地盤；如果主要銀行握在總統的表弟手中，總統可能就不急著開放價格低廉的行動錢包系統。安全問題通常不難處理，例如只要設定交易額和餘額上限，就能避免洗錢。
政府非但不該阻止行動錢包，更該親身使用，例如阿富汗就以行動錢包支付警察和官員的薪資，坦尚尼亞也接受以行動錢包支付稅金；其他國家應該向它們學習才是。（黃維德譯）
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