Vente-privee.com. Why mobile phones can transform banking. Accelerates deployment of its mobile payment service, Orange Money, in Africa. BNP Paribas and Orange partner to launch the first entirely mobile banking offer in France. Orange Money Sénégal. How Mobile Banking Works" Cesar Rangel/AFP/Getty Images If extreme climber Alain Robert had a mobile banking account, he could also access his finances while climbing.
You’ve probably seen the commercial: A woman, hanging from the side of a mountain, receives a text message on her cell phone. The message is from her bank, telling her that her account is about to be overdrawn. With just a few clicks on her phone, she transfers funds from her savings account to her checking account. Www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/mobile-payments-for-banks/Documents/monetizing-mobile-report.pdf. Financial services for the unbanked are among the most promising opportunities for mobile-telecom operators hoping to counter slowing subscription growth with auxiliary offerings, such as banking, health care, and education services.
In emerging markets, formal banking reaches about 37 percent of the population, compared with a 50 percent penetration rate for mobile phones. For every 10,000 people, these countries have one bank branch and one ATM—but 5,100 mobile phones. A new focus on bringing financial services to the unbanked—those without easy access to traditional banking channels—represents a strategic shift for mobile operators. The very small deposits and loans held by poorer customers make them unprofitable for banks that use traditional delivery models. But mobile devices reduce the cost to serve customers by 50 to 70 percent, making it possible to offer financial services to a vast population once considered unprofitable.
Bankers across Europe believe that mobile devices will transform the retail-banking landscape in the next three to five years.
In a recent survey of European bankers, however, a majority of the respondents acknowledged that they are not investing sufficiently to take advantage of the opportunities and that telecommunications companies and other nonbanks are leading the way. These findings—based on joint research by McKinsey and the European Financial Management and Marketing Association (EFMA)—come on top of an additional analysis suggesting that mobile devices’ overall economic impact on the banking industry may be neutral at best. Individual banks should be able to increase their revenues and cut costs if they successfully exploit the convenience of mobile, its potential to drive digital commerce, and the opportunity it represents to target the unbanked in emerging markets. Exhibit European banks expect mobile access to change retail banking fundamentally. Www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_MFSD_Report_2011.