MMT hot in Americas
The Mobile Money Transfer conference and expo in Mexico City ended this week. 150 attendees, speakers and exhibitors showed up for an interesting event revealing the huge potential and interest MMT pulls all over the world but especially here in Latin America, the Carribbean and US. The astonishing amount of 26 billion dollars a year is sent over the world’s largest remittance corridor between USA to Mexico! New legislation in Mexico will allow not only the banks and other regulated financial institutions or agents to conduct financial transactions but also the likes of Mobile Network Operators. And they are not sitting still and waiting! There is not a single operator that at least has started to gather information about how they can position themselves in this transaction flow. There is obviously potentially huge revenue to make but also another reason is to thigh the subscriber more close to you. More than 85 percent of the subscribers are prepaid accounts and now when the number portability is introduced in Mexico it makes it easier for the user to churn to the MNO that offers the lowest air time rate. Therefore the MNO needs to find new services which keep the subscribers within their business. That is why MMT is on top of the MNO’s agenda!
If the MMT solution also includes domestic mobile money transfer and payments, mobile utility bills/ invoice payments, prepaid top up capabilities it’s even better as this is what the MNO’s are looking for. Proximity payments using NFC should also be an available option in the system.
There is a strong believe in using SMS and the SIM card is the way forward in realizing a MMT system which was confirmed by a couple of operators. Simplicity and reliability is the key words for success.