International Mobile Banking Updates - Sept 18

Seven ways mobile phones have changed lives in Africa
"A little over a decade ago there were about 100,000 phone lines in Nigeria, mostly landlines run by the state-owned telecoms behemoth, NITEL. Today NITEL is dead, and Nigeria has close to 100 million mobile phone lines, making it Africa's largest telecoms market, according to statistics by the Nigerian Communications Commission. Across the rest of the continent the trends are similar: between 2000 and 2010, Kenyan mobile phone firm Safaricom saw its subscriber base increase in excess of 500-fold. In 2010 alone the number of mobile phone users in Rwanda grew by 50%, figures from the country's regulatory agency show."

Mobile banking accounts registered 37% increase
"The country’s number of mobile banking accounts has reached at 1.45 million, experiencing a remarkable growth of 37 per cent during the quarter ending June 30,2012,a state bank official has said. The official said the accounts? activity level has also improved substantially during the second quarter (April-June) 2012 as the number of active accounts increased by 66 per cent."

Banking reinvented
"Mobile technology is forcing a complete reinvention of the banking world, with demand for new services through a more interconnected community of users, businesses and services. The mobile generation has profound implications for South African banks, and banking users. South African banks have historically enjoyed a reputation for pioneering online and electronic banking services. The rate of innovation appeared to be stagnating in recent years, but the last 12 months have seen major developments in online banking, and set the scene for another renaissance in electronic banking."

Chinese Banks Need to Focus More on Mobile Banking - Executives
"Chinese banks need to focus on leveraging technologies such as mobile services as they shift more toward consumption-based lending, said banking executives at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin Tuesday. Such a shift is important for Chinese banks which have relied heavily on VIP or high net worth clients, said Ma Weihua, chief executive officer of China Merchants Bank Co. (3968.HK). "I.T. is like ..."

USAID prods mobile money use
"THE US, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the country’s mobile money service providers aim to increase the number of mobile money users in the country by 1 million when they launched a new partnership dubbed 'Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money' yesterday."

Mobile payment to improve banking services
"The Bank of Zambia (BoZ) says there is need to ensure that anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations are in place in the advent of mobile payment systems in the country. BoZ deputy governor for administration Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula says with mobile payment solutions being on an increase, vices that can jeopardise the process are likely to occur."

M-banking poised for explosive growth in UK
"One-third of UK consumers expect to be using smartphones to do all their banking by 2020, while two-thirds of banks expect everyone to be using mobile banking in some capacity by 2017, according to a report released by business technology provider Avanade this week."

St George launches latest mobile, online banking services
"The St George Banking Group has unveiled its latest innovations in mobile banking services with the launch of new features to its mobile banking app and online banking services which it says now allows customers to open a savings or transaction account via their smartphone in just 60 seconds and start using the account immediately."