Monday, February 05, 2007

The important elements of Mbanking

What is important about mobile banking? What makes it successful? How do you judge failures? These are all critical questions in approaching mobile banking projects and deployments. To answer any of the above questions, first answer the following question: "Is the service being used?" If people are using the system (preferably voluntarily), it is most probably addressing a need or making life easier for the subscriber and this is the single most important driver for a successful deployment of mobile banking.

So what make people use mobile banking? Not a lot of people around that can answer this question as not a lot of people have got people to use the service.

First of all the service must address a specific need - a reason for using the system (preferably regularly). This is not as easy as it seems, because it will have to change behaviour and people don't do this easily. Furthermore the reason is different for different communities and target markets. It takes skill and insight to get this right.

Second, it must be easy and fun to use. It must be intuitive and work... every time.

and Thirdly, consumers must feel that the solution can be trusted and is secure.When it gets to money, the average consumer is quite conservative. It is not about how secure the system is, but rather how secure it is perceived to be.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

SIM based would not work globally. How are any pin records wiped from the phone, incase is gets lost or stolen?

Hannes@Home said...

For your information, the majority of solutions that work globally at the moment are based on SIM solutions... Go check it out: Smartmoney, mPesa, Mobile Money, Celpay - and many more. With many millions of subscribers, it is hard to argue against that.

Hannes@Home said...

The other thing: SIM based solutions (maybe with the exception of Java applications - with JSR188) are the only way that it is possible that PIN's are never stored, never in the clear and never visible.... like good financial systems should be designed.