Chris Skinner HAVE MOBILE CARRIERS GOT BANKS' NUMBERS?

摘要

LENGTHY DISCUSSIONS ABOUT mobile telephony take place at almost all banking and payments conferences these days. The banks talk about a mobile payments ecosystem and how they have to work closely with carriers, handset manufacturers, retailers, merchants and more to achieve a share of this new, burgeoning marketplace. And yet, the more this goes on, the more sceptical some become of the banks' approach and more supportive of the opportunity for non-banks.This is because many financial institutions have yet to see the threat of the non-banks. The threat is that mobile carriers don't care a jot about what banks think and will do whatever they want that makes sense. This is because the marriages between banks and mobile carriers and handset operators are purely marriages of convenience. If one partner can see greater benefit by taking a larger slice of the cake and killing the other, then so be it. This strikes a chord as there have been two orthree big things that have been happening lately. First, the well-worn story of M-PESA - Vodafone's mobile-phone based money transfer service - and Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom. It is widely known that M-PESA has been a runaway success in Kenya, so much so that M-PESA is now a bank. It has tieups with Western Union and has pushed into other territories, such as Iran, although with less success so far.