Visa Incoporated and Fundamo, the Visa-owned mobile money platform, has announced the results of a study that reveals consumers in six developing countries are already highly aware of mobile money services- the ability to make payments or send funds simply by accessing an account on their mobile phones.
A statement on Tuesday said that nearly 90 per cent of consumers surveyed by Visa expressed interest in making use of those services in the future.
According to the statement, the Visa Mobile Money study analyses the financial services needs and expectations of mobile money among nearly 2,500 consumers, mobile money agents, and merchants in Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
The results revealed that consumers’ needs for financial services were far more sophisticated than previously believed and went well beyond the established transaction set offered by mobile money services currently.
The study also revealed that security concerns associated with carrying cash and the need to quickly send money to family members living far away were among the key drivers for mobile money adoption.
The Chief Executive Officer of Fundamo and Group Country Manager, sub-Saharan Africa, Visa Incoporated, Mr. Hannes van Rensburg, said, “Thanks to the mobile money community, millions of previously unbanked people are now able to make basic electronic transactions such as person-to-person and bill payments. Our potential for driving far reaching social and economic change, while at the same time growing transaction volumes in developing countries, is significant. But we’ll limit that potential if we don’t learn to stop and really listen to our customers.”
The Visa study suggested that the success of mobile financial services was determined by how deeply a mobile money provider understood its customers and tailored the service to the needs of consumers and mobile money agents – from service menus, to marketing and education.