Furthering its Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) project, mobile network operator body the GSM Association (GSMA) has awarded six grants from a $12.5 million fund financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The grants follow award of the first four MMU grants in October (see EPI 268).
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In its latest award round, the GSMA selected three recipients in Africa and three in Asia. Though amounts are unspecified, the maximum grant is $1 million.
Grants went to the Cameroon and Uganda units of South African mobile network operator MTN, and the Tanzanian unit of South African mobile network operator Vodacom, in which UK operator VodaFone has a 65 percent stake.
In Cameroon, where under 10 percent of the working population currently have a bank account, MTNs MobileMoney service will provide person-to-person (P2P), account-to-cash and cash-to-cash payments as well as utility bill receipt and payment capabilities.
A similar service to be offered by MTN Uganda aims to connect the 86 percent of Ugandas population that resides in rural areas to banking services.
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By GlobalDataOf particular note is the grant to Vodacom Tanzania to be used to boost uptake of the M-Pesa mobile payments service in that country.
Unlike Kenya, where M-Pesa has proved to be one of the worlds big mobile payments success stories, the service in Tanzania has battled.
According to the GSMA Tanzania, M-Pesa is inhibited by the agent networks lack of disposable cash which is seen as a major obstacle to increase agent e-money float holding and hence transaction volumes.
The MMU grant will support a project to enable Vodacom Tanzania to provide a geographically wider line of e-money credit or revolving credit to increase the total float holding value in the agent network.
In Asia, two grant recipients are in Bangladesh, a country where only 13 percent of the population has a bank account. The recipients are Bangladeshi operator Grameenphone, and Aktel, a joint venture between Malaysian telecommunications company Axiata Group and Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo.
Aktel has just launched its first service, mobile bill payments for electricity subscribers, while Grameenphone aims to enable migrant workers in urban areas to remit funds to their families in rural areas.
Dialog, Sri Lankas largest operator, was the sixth recipient in the latest MMU grant awards. Also an Axiata Group unit, Dialog will use the funding to assist in providing mobile services such as utility bill payment, P2P transfers, over-the-counter payments and cash withdrawal/deposits to the countrys unbanked.
