“In Senegal, traditional banking services are typically very limited; people can spend an entire day each month standing in line to pay for things like their utility services in cash,” said Richard Hababou, managing director of Societe Generale Innovations Group. “Yoban’tel by Obopay allows us to establish innovative and convenient mobile money transfer and payments for those Senegalese who have previously not had access to such services.”
Societe Generale also broadened its distribution channels with the Obopay solution, adding Credit Mutuel du Senegal, a micro-finance agency; Tigo, a mobile operator; and a satellite TV provider Canalsat Horizons. Users can enroll for a mobile payment service and load or pick up cash at these retail outlets as well as banks. “Eighty percent of the population has not had access to a bank account before,” said David Schwartz, head of product and corporate marketing at Redwood, Calif.-based Obopay. The solution uses SMS to enable mobile-phone users to transfer money or make payments.
Each one of Obopay’s deployments is a little different, as each one has a different regulatory environment, and each partnership is slightly different, which shows the flexibility of the solution. In Senegal and the United States, the major partnerships are with financial institutions, in Kenya, a mobile operator is the primary provider; in India, handset maker Nokia is the primary partner and as such, the solution comes preloaded on Nokia handsets, Schwartz said.
Other French-speaking countries could benefit from the service because Societe Generale has such a large reach, Schwartz said. The banking institution employs 157,000 people worldwide. Mobile banking solutions are expected to transform the way people work and live in developing countries because they will have access to cheap financial services. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earmarked $12.5 million to power Mobile Money for the Unbanked, a program that works with industry players to overcome barriers in deploying m-banking services to the reported 1 billion users worldwide who have phones but no bank accounts.