Thank you to everyone who took time to complete our poll during our Mojaloop PI-10 session on Hack-a-thon Update presentation.
Results for a poll that was run poll during the Mojaloop PI-10 community session on Hack-a-thon and responded to by 32 FinTech, Financial Inclusion and Business experts from more 15 countries around the globe revealed that Women leadership in FinTech companies plays a major role in developing financial systems for women.
The questions was:
Do you think prioritizing women leadership for a FinTech company has a positive effect on developing products and systems that best serve women’s needs?
Yes
No
Eighty Five percent (83%) of the respondent were male whereas 17 percent were female.
From Time Saving to Life Saving capacity of Digital Financial Services (DFS), the latest report by HiPipo estimates that about 110 million people were in the last 30 days, ending 14th April derisked from Coronavirus exposures that would consequently result in to many of them contracting the dreaded COVID-19 disease.
This good news is thanks to the users’ ability to use DFS instead of physical handling and exchange of cash notes, in 15 African countries. Many of these saved lives are women who shop for their families’ daily needs. But that’s not all.
Further, to process 102 million wallet to wallet transfers, users saved close to USD 60 Million over the same period. This HiPipo report randomly sampled digital financial services in Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Swaziland, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Benin, Ghana, DRC Congo, and South Africa.
With the temporary waving of transfer fees, each user most likely saved at least USD 0.3 whenever they processed a transfer. However, cross network/bank services are still costly. With more interoperability implementation, a further $30 Million is likely to be saved each 30 days if transfers keep zero rated and interoperability costs are cut up to about 70 percent. So far, Mobile Money operators like MTN, Safaricom, Airtel and Banks such as Stanbic and Standard Chartered, have zero rated digital banking services in a number of countries.
At least 1.2 billion transactions were processed in 30 days, through 110million active wallets. This means these 15 countries are processing close to 40 million mobile money transactions a day.
Mobile money account-to-account (A2A) interoperability is increasing transfer volumes between providers. Interoperable person to person (P2P) transfer volumes (i.e. off-net transfers) grew by nearly 23 per cent between March 14 and April 14 2020.
Stronger desire for interoperability and integrations with banks and mobile network operators (MNOs), would attract more international financial system players. Mobile money-enabled international remittances have been flourishing within the last 30 days. Remittance services such as Azimo, world remit have seen a tremendous growth in usage, for instance Azimo has registered customer growth of M-Pesa users.
With the Coronavirus pandemic in mind, various FinTechs are working on cross-border payments solutions in collaboration with money transfer giants to enable instant money transfers to the mobile wallets in Africa and Asia.
“Cross-border interoperability, collaboration and integrations such as Mowali with traditional remittance service providers (RSPs) like money transfer operators – MoneyGram and Western Union, and digital RSPs and FinTechs, such as Wirex, CurrencyFair, TransferWise, WeSwap, WorldRemit, Wave, TransferGo, Skrill and Azimo will play a very noble role in scaling remittances and DFS.” .” Innocent Kawooya, the HiPipo CEO noted.
GitHub’s Open Source in the Social Sector report, quoted Miller Abel who stresses that “collaboration can bring down the DFS cost to the consumer to, “essentially zero, so that cost is no longer a barrier for use.” Miller leads the Mojaloop project, which is open source software (OSS) designed to increase interoperability among financial systems and create more global financial inclusivity.
The Covid-19 situation marks a decisive start towards the ‘new normal’ in financial services, a digital one for all, as the number of digital financial transactions, mobile money subscribers and active wallets will keep growing and become part of everyday life for more people around the world as long as all stakeholders play their role.
Lastly, in a bid to Include Everyone, a new digital payments’ lifestyle must be helped with disruptive innovation because of the available opportunities for the incumbents, as the Covid-19 situation is much- anticipated to slowly lead to the death of cash.
In 1994, the world’s richest man, also MICROSOFT founder, BILL GATES declared that BANKING IS NECESSARY but BANKS ARE NOT.
26 years later, the innovations and developments in the banking and finance sector continue to vindicate BILL GATES.
His proclamation is even more relevant now, considering that the Coronavirus pandemic has become a fully-fledged global economic crisis.
Minus washing hands with soap, sanitizing, not touching our eyes, nose and mouth plus STAYING AT HOME, another effective way of combating COVID19 is embracing Mobile Financial Services.
In African tradition, having money in CASH is a sign of wealth and status but these out-dated practices must totally stop if we are to SURVIVE such pandemics.
Money notes are not only dirty and infected but also unsafe as they encourage theft. On the other hand, a cashless economy is clean and safe.
Away from the health angle, the economic way of combating the Corona Virus is embracing Mobile Financial Services such as mobile money and other digital payments.
Digital cashless payments particularly empower WOMEN and other vulnerable members of our society to take care of their family needs through electronic home shopping using mobile money without exposing themselves to COVID19 and other dangers.
It is not lost on me that a big section of our people is in rural areas with limited access to mobile phones. But we have a very good start point.
Even so, COVID19 should be a wakeup call for US. How do we ensure that everyone boards the mobile financial services train? What are we doing to ensure that mobile financial services are available, affordable and accessible by everyone?
HiPipo Foundation is implementing a deliberate program to further entrench financial inclusion with well-tailored activities targeting everyone, but with stronger focus on WOMEN, YOUTH and PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES.
Like you may know; an ECONOMY that includes EVERYONE, BENEFITS EVERYONE.
From crisis comes innovation and opportunity. #COVID19 situation is no different. The ‘new normal’ in financial services will be an increasingly digital one and it is up to the incumbents to finally invest in this. We may finally see ‘real’ digital transformation and achieve full financial inclusion. Digital Financial Services will from now and going forward be key to any form of transaction.
HiPipo is keen to promote secure digital financial services because of their vital role in promoting financial inclusion.
It is time for advocates, MNOs, Banks, FinTechs, developers and everyone keen to promote financial inclusion to think interoperability, think internet of money and think of the most affordable ways to ensure everyone can have access to digital financial services.
For instance expansion of choices and creating platforms that strengthen the voices for women and girls in the financial inclusion arena might become the most profitable investment that benefits everyone now and for the future. Think about it!
