Mobile Money Summit: Catalyzing Mobile Payments Worldwide

Yesterday I posted an interview with Carol Realini from Obopay. Now she’s on stage discussing mobile payments industry players and how they are in a unique position to benefit from a global approach to industry developments. She talked about financial services, wireless and service providers and how they all need to work together to build a sustainable ecosystem that will propel the industry at a global level.

The recap from her speech:

• First she introducing Obopay, mentioning their deal with MasterCard, and investment from Nokia (NYSE: NOK).
• According to Carol, the success will require three things: a holistic approach, strategic partners, and new payment flows.
• Obopay wants to serve all market segments – unbanked, under-banked and banked users in all markets. She mentioned an U.S. example where according to some research there are 30 million families that are considered ubanked or under-banked — i.e. underserved and over-charged.
• Obopay’s philosophy is “Value is in the network.”
• Then she discussed how different user groups require different services: banked want flexible access, under-banked need full access, and un-banked pre-paid money services.
• Because they want to work with all kinds of users, Obopay’s platform is designed to work in various regulatory environments: highly regulated (restricted) such as India, regulated such as U.S. and the EU, as well as innovative markets like Kenya, where telcos are allowed to perform some business banks usually do.
• In that sense, Obopay works with different stakeholders – carriers, banks, merchants, associations, and consumers to reach its goal of offering a cross-carrier and cross-bank service.
• However, when they enter a new market they pick a key/anchor bank and carrier. In the U.S. that was Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless and Citibank. Now they’re also co-operating with AT&T (NYSE: T).
• Finally, she mentioned Obopay’s plans to support all mobile platforms and even extend to social networks.

And that’s all I caught from Carol this time. I’ll be leaving Fira shortly…