At the Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona, the GSMA told attendees that it’s made some exciting progress on two fronts: its Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) initiative and NFC standardization.
MMU was launched in February. GSMA says three projects in Africa led by mobile operators have been identified. In a joint project with the Gates Foundation, funding will be announced soon. Once the money is doled out, about 80 percent of the fund will remain.
The Single Wire Protocol (SWP) standard recently got a thumbs-up from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. It provides a standardized way for a SIM card to communicate with an NFC chip in a mobile phone. Handset vendors can roll out NFC-enabled handsets to the mass market. Nokia plans to launch its first SWP/NFC device in 3Q09.
Research shows the number of “unbanked” customers who own a mobile phone will grow dramatically in the next three years. It also shows mobile banking is big business, with the opportunity to provide operators with $5 billion (U.S.) in direct revenue by 2012.
