Mobile Money - Realizing the Potential for Impact

Thursday, April 14, 2011
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
(Pacific)
CISAC Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Nathan Wyeth
Mobile payment systems launched in Africa, Asia, and Latin America now offer anyone with a mobile phone the ability to store money electronically and send it to other phone users, without visiting a bank and sometimes without even having a bank account. Over a billion people with a mobile phone are now closer to financial services. 

But will these systems become vehicles of financial inclusion, or will they remain simply a convenience for the urban elite? 
 
Nathan Wyeth, the director of FrontlineSMS:Credit in Nairobi, Kenya, will speak on examples and the potential of mobile money empowering people at the base of the pyramid in East Africa and around the world.  FrontlineSMS:Credit builds lightweight software that enables enterprises serving the poor - like microfinance institutions, co-ops, health organizations, community organizations, and businesses - to transact using mobile payments.  

Nathan will touch on the architecture of these systems, the sector-wide decisions made by mobile networks that will determine if these systems open up or remain closed and proprietary, the hurdles to realizing the promise of mobile money, and how new people can become involved in this sector and answering these questions.