Global researchers assess mobile money usage

RESEARCHERS and industry players from across the world today meet in Nairobi to assess the strides made in the mobile money business, following the run-away success of technological innovations in Kenya. The two-day meeting will be seeking ways to build on the success of the mobile money applications by exploring the possibilities of rolling out more relevant applications that will boost financial transactions at lower income level groups, also known as “base of the pyramid.” According to conference chairman, Professor Timothy Waema, despite Kenya enjoying much success in the mobile money applications, the uptake has been limited to money transfer only. “We would like to find out why we are not experiencing similar enthusiasm in embracing other mobile money applications from research. The conference will also allow researchers to establish the challenges and needs of industry practitioners in order to find ways of solving them,” he said. Waema, a scholar from the School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi, warned that unless there is a joint collaboration between the academia and industry players, the benefits of mobile money technology will not be fully enjoyed at the lower levels of society. He said the industry has challenges which could also be tackled through research in the universities. “Closer university-industry collaboration, with facilitating conditions created by the government and development partners, will help to conceptualise new models which will add value to users,” Waema observed. He said research institutions have gathered very insightful data on consumers which need to be shared with industry players for product development.Academicians are blaming the slow uptake of mobile applications on a knowledge gap between the industry and consumers. Despite having more than 15 million customers in Kenya with access to mobile phone applications, 99 per cent use the service only to send money while only a paltry one percent carries out financial transactions through mobile money platforms. “There are many innovations out there but they are not being scaled down to the users appropriately. We need to bridge this gap by synchronising our expertise,” Waema stated.

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Global researchers assess mobile money usage