The key to building a winning mobile banking proposition is to grasp the key elements that have led to bank-led mobile banking success in emerging markets in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Firstly, take your customer on a journey. Introduce leading products in the market, one step at a time. Lead, guide, and educate customers and the market incrementally. Elementary mobile banking services is a starting point, not a panacea, or the end game.
Secondly, make it easy with a simple interface, convenience, and low cost. These are the key factors to the success of a bank-Led mobile banking strategy. Your customers want simple, uncomplicated banking. Value for money, stability, convenience, and superior customer service are key along with a consistent and seamless user experience across all channels (whether in-store, mobile, ATM, or branch banking).
Thirdly, make sure the product works well first time, and the offering delivered with a ‘first-world’ approach to product reliability in a ‘third-world’ market. Mobile penetration is higher than access to financial services across many markets which makes mobile phones a vital link in any emerging markets banking play because mobile phones are the only access (in some cases) to electronic banking for many people. Further, customers in rural and peri-urban areas have become reliant on pre-paid products and other services on cellphone banking.
Lastly, build a Cash-in/Cash-out network. Solveworx cannot stress enough the importance of this as part ensuring mobile banking success. While this is not require an investment in branches and physical infrastructure, partnerships and technology can do the job just as well. In fact banks are ideally positioned to drive mobile banking and low cost banking distribution models and thereby derive the benefits of shifting high-volume, low value transactions from branches to a self-service or distributed network, by solving the “cash-in/cash out conundrum”. The success of the cash-in/cash-out network is premised on an extensive well-managed banking network underpinned by a reliable liquidity management policy, geared to meet customer’s needs.
