Tag Archives: banking
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Colloquium: Mobile 2.0: m-money for the unbanked
Colloquium conducted by Dr. Erwin Alampay of NCPAG, Philippines.
Presentation began by looking at the potential for M-money.
Why should we use m-money?
Improving efficiency: Improve services, financial services. BOP a target.
BOP (migrants) relies on various forms of remittances
Looking at Filipinos, 9% of BOP had a relative living abroad, and 13% in another part of the country, so there is a vested interest in m-money.
At present about 5% is going through informal channels according to the Filipino central bank. According to respondents about 80% sent through banks.
Workers need access to bank accounts in both the remitting and remitted country for remittances through banks. This is a limitation. M-money may not necessarily need an account in the remitting country.
Filipino workers generally prefere formal channels. Todays presentation will focus on m-money channels such as smart money of g-cash.
ADB: Transaction costs about 2.5%-3.5% of remittances.
For local remittances: Pawn shops used. Roughly remits around Php 500-1000. These are potential targets for m-money.
RS: How does the Pawn shops work? Pawn shops have a wide network, usually works through a call or SMS. A transaction number will be given to the person sending the money. The number will be given to the person who is due to receive the ..read more
Sri Lanka: Dialog assists Disaster Management
Dialog Telekom PLC in collaboration with its partners Dialog University of Moratuwa Mobile Communications Research Laboratory and Microimage Technologies together with the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) of Sri Lanka launched Sri Lanka’s first ever mass alert warning system; the ‘Disaster and Emergency Warning Network’ (DEWN) yesterday under the patronage of Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe.
Speaking on the launch of DEWN Group Chief Executive Officer, Dialog Telekom PLC, Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said that “There are 10 million people in this country who have access to telecommunication and mobile services. Now the mobile has become a powerful tool which could be called as a ‘Digital Empowerment Device’ and our citizens are digitally empowered into the digital network”. Dr. Wijayasuriya went onto say that now one can even provide banking and other information services via a mobile phone unit adding that the Dialog News Alert service has now reached 350,000 subscribers.
DEWN is a system that was being tested by the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) to alert Dialog mobile users of potential disasters via a method called ‘Cell Broadcast’. Users only need to configure area information reception settings on their Dialog mobiles to receive the alerts issued. The DMC takes ..read more
With Bharti coming telecom competition is getting tougher
We could still do better; But more taxes could kill the industry
The Nation Economist, Sunday 26 August 2007 | See Print version
I have to say that JHU does not know economics. What is the rationale behind taxing the only sector that is growing? The industry is giving government enormous amount of revenue. Twenty percent of every mobile rupee goes to the government. If you squeeze the goose for more eggs the goose will ultimately die. To my knowledge some of the taxes the government is thinking of will really kill the industry. We have got data which say people in the bottom of the pyramid are willing to spend Rs.500 per month on communication. So if the government put another tax these people will be discouraged to get themselves connected and as a result of that the government will lose revenue.
Taiwan quake shakes telecom links in Asia
The strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged six separate submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia. Internet connectivity in a number of countries are either down or are slowed down thanks to taffic that is being rerouted over networks that have escaped damage. Most of Jakarta (Indonesia) and Pondicherry (Southern India) have been without Internet until this afternoon (Dec 27) at least. In our office in Sri Lanka, SLT’s ADSL connection (though congested) is working. However, Lankacom’s leased line is down since it probably connects to the Internet backbone via Singapore.
These disruptions have major consequences for any business that relies on telecom for delivering their services, including, banking, trading, call centers, remotely managed services etc. This event also underlines the necessity for redundancy and why policymakers and regulators must liberalize international gateways to allow a number of different submarine cables connecting different destinations to land in a country. From Bloomberg:
Damaged cables include the APCN2 cable and Sea-Me-We3 cables, Chunghwa’s Leng said. Eight STM-1 cables from Okinawa off Japan and 4 STM-1 cables to Shanghai are acting as backup, Chunghwa said in a statement. The company may also use the ST-1 ..read more
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