GSMA Global Mobile Money Pilot
An interesting area of discussion is the concept of Electronic Mobile Money Transfer or Expatriate Mobile Money Transfer (EMMT). It has been getting a lot of coverage lately[1][2][3][4][5].This is definitely one of those buzzwords that has not been finalized yet. EMMT refers to the ability to send money using the mobile phone. In the case of the “expatriate” version, it refers to ability of Oversees Foreign Workers (OFW) in a host country to send money to their relatives in their home country using the mobile phone. It is good that the GSMA is pushing this into the global arena.
The GSM Association has launched a pilot programme aimed at tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world’s 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don’t have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable.
Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, the GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than $1 trillion by 2012.
To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while the GSMA is setting up a pilot with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorization, clearing and settlement. The GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks. The hub will enable migrant workers to trigger international money transfers using their mobile phone and their families to be notified via their mobile phones.
Countries like Nigeria, India, Pakistan and the Philippines have large expatriate populations. The Philippines has ten (10) million expatriate workers around the world. This is 1/8 of the population. This should be something the Philippines is good at as local mobile network operators[1][2] already implemented such services within their coverage areas and MVNOs. EMMT is definitely something that can benefit these economies. It is basically lubrication for the global remittance market and can potentially increase its size significantly.
