During March the South African blogging community announced the launch of a fee mobile banking network (Read here, here and here). Based on the information on these blogs, a brand new mobile banking service will be launched in May... for free. Very little information about Mahala or the Forus network could be found after an extensive search on the web. The Mahala facebook page had one comment and ten people "liked" it.The Branson Center for Entrepreneurship does exist, but no independent corroboration could be found that the Center is indeed supporting the initiative and what the form of this support would be like. On Indiegogo website, Mahala requests donations to make this venture a reality. According to the website an initial aim is to raise $200 000 by means of donations. (I tried to make a contribution, but the website's Paypal connection was down.)
What I found interesting is the connection between Mahala, the Forus Financial network and FireID. The different companies are referred to in many of the article and also, the logos are all very similar:
3 comments:
Hannes, if FireID is part of the venture then things does not look bright since as far as I know FireID is in trouble (know all staff was let go a couple of months ago).
The logos you show here has been updated - Mahala/Forus (mahala.co) has adopted a new Ubuntu+ Wifi-like theme. (sigh). Mahala/Forus has nothing to do with FireID.
http://www.citypress.co.za/Business/News/The-revolution-in-mobile-payments-is-here-20110505
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