The Visa Indonesia team put on a wonderful two day conference on in Lombok last week. It hardly felt like working even though there were some great presentations and business conversations between the drinks out of coconuts.
Thanks Elly and team for a great few days!!

"Everything takes longer than you think and then it's suddenly been there all along" That is my pitch on mobile payments in a nutshell and is always followed by the question "Will YOU be ready?" That said some things DO come faster than you think.

The convergence of low cost smartphone and mobile payments has arrived. G-Cash in the Philippines, a mobile payment service targeting the unbanked the last 6-7 years, has launched an Android app. Just a short (4 years) time ago you had to register and transact on the service via '/' delimited SMS messages in a specified format. It was a user experience nightmare that few could get correct without assistance. It was the assumed necessary evil as the masses, we were told, only had access to SMS or USSD.

Step change is occurring rapidly behind the scenes.
Feature phones are disappearing in urban areas and being replaced by Chinese, Indonesian, and Indian low cost android or blackberry handsets. Data is the new killer app as it drives secondary commerce opportunities. Data is certain to slowly become as or more important than network airtime. The evidence is Telcos selling network infrastructure and trading their business model from pushing minutes to driving mobile marketplace margin.

Mobile Marketplaces need mobile payments.
MCB Bank proved in Pakistan that feature phone functionality isn't the real barrier we perceive it to be by reaching consumers with the award winning, transaction generating, Mobile Web only, MCB Mobile service. But that was a bank targeting existing bank customers so it was assumed a higher end consumer and not a relevant peer to mass market services. G-Cash has been targeting the mass prepaid consumer without doubt since launch. The fact that they feel an Android app is worth their effort signals to me that change is happening. This marks the end of the beginning. Expect mobile payment volumes to start to rise over the next 3 years on cost smartphones in disproportion to market penetration. Expect the bandwagon to overflow with followers trying capture the profitable "prepaid smartphone consumer". Android OS handsets provide the security, customer experience, aspirational feeling, and finally the price point to get large numbers of handsets into the market.

It's only the end of the beginning and the middle might take longer that you think.
Marketplace merchant players and mobile financial services providers will start to see the glimmer of volumes required for real investment in the industry to find the long tail of it's potential.
But are you ready?

Today president Obama was fact checked by the Washington Post about a recent speech he gave stating former President Rutherford B. Hayes, president back in 1877, was a technophobe. In fact President Hayes was welcoming of technology and was the man to put the first telephone into the white house.
President Obama's point however was valid that people should look forward to new technology and not backwards to be relevant in the new world.
Give the work I do in mobile money and the importance of the telephone in my work I thought it was worth sharing the most interesting item from the article. The phone number.
The first US phone number for the White house was "1". That number back in 1877 was the start of mass electronic communication in the US. Less than 150 years later there are over 5 billion phone numbers. It all starts somewhere.

Side note: A certain colleague of mine who is a whiz with facts will be getting quizzed on this Monday for sure.

Building going on everywhere in prep for the MWC.

Saw this sign in the hotel this morning.
I was really hoping it wasn't Demo day.
Vendor benefits "Buy 2 armed busses and get 200 orange jumpsuits free!!"

Ramadan in Dubai for the second year in a row. This time a great view for sunset signally time for the Iftar.

BKash launched last week in Bangladesh and the billboards are already going up. I was lucky enough to be at the launch ceremony, as they are a Fundamo customer, and it was encouraging to hear the strong support for the product from some major players (BRAC, Robi, BRAC Bank). I can't wait to head back and share some photos of the agents and people transacting on my next visit.
Check out their services at www.bKash.con

We hear it all the time. Booking seats and buying train tickets in Bangladesh and India are where the huge mobile commerce transactions will come from.
But this cartoon from The Daily Star in Dhaka is a true representation of what busses and trains are really like. A hawker, a driver, and packed. A reserve and pay system is unlikely the next step in the evolution.
What's the customer want? To get on the bus and go home as fast as possible.
Choosing a seat isn't near term viable. Limiting passenger numbers to bus/train designed capacity isn't either. Avoiding the queue by paying via mobile for a standing room only bus so you're first to get on is a potential benefit that's worth loading a mobile wallet for. Or avoiding a queue to be the last on a soon departing bus to get home faster. The solution must address the e-ticket issue to make sure the receipt is available off line (SMS?) and contains a code that is tough to replicate so the hawker/conductor/driver can ensure it's one time use and authentic. Or a more distributed way to print a mobile ticket.
Make sure you don't slow the hawker down with ticket authentication or target private bus systems like Jeepneys who avoid the tax man or you'll have missed the mark.
Anyone who says NFC for delivery, forget the expense, hasn't see the deep scrapes 8 feet all the way up a Bangali bus.
The solution must be a mix of mobile and manual.
Answer these 2 questions with the solution and you're likely on to something.
Does it make the customers journey faster (less time queueing)? Does it fill more buses/trains or make it fill and leave faster?

I've always been a believer in the inevitability of mobile payments. As with all beliefs they waver with events along the way so sometimes I wondered if I would be around to ever see it. I came back from holiday and the company was owned by VISA. At Mobile Money Summit it wasn't outrageous claims but small and real uses of mobile payments taking the stage to be celebrated. Now this week with a trip to India, some calls from Indonesia, and a look at the developing bKash.com website in Bangladesh I have to say my spirits are higher than ever. The best thing is it's not from hype but from legitimate action based on rational reasons with tempered expectations. So back to work we go.

No matter what your proposition there is always room for an elite status offer for your best customers.