Recent research by I.E. Market Research shows that mobile phone payments were worth 31.5 billion dollars in 2010, a slight decrease on 2009, due to the effects of the recession. This company predicts, however, that global mobile phone payments will continue to rise and be worth around 950 billion USD [...]
Micropayments are financial transactions that involve a very small sum of money. PayPal defines a micropayment as anything less than USD 12, whereas Visa classifies anything less than USD 20 as a micropayment. Traditionally it has been difficult, financially, to recoup the costs involved in processing micropayments. With SMS billing, [...]
Since 1947, Pakistan’s banking sector has come a long way. The current estimated population of Pakistan exceeds 182 million out of which roughly only 7% use banking services. With a network of 12,000 branches across Pakistan the banking footprint is well established, but has also been deemed insufficient. Taking into [...]
M-Pesa has established itself globally as one of the most successful mobile micro-finance and money transfer services. Its network consists of the following countries and regions: Afghanistan, South Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, Kenya, and India. Vodafone, India’s second largest mobile operator introduced M-Pesa in India in 2011. It has [...]
By Janet Kamana, Nairobi M-PESA is a mobile money transfer service supported by Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile network operator. It is arguably the most developed mobile money transfer system in the world, and has transformed the lives of many Kenyans. A typical scene: sending and receiving money with M-PESA [...]
South and Central America will see a huge growth in the use of mobile phones as a means to provide access to banking services, person to person payments and remittances. This part of the world is hugely under-served by banks and it is here that mobile phone payments can make [...]
The growth in these areas of mobile payments is set to increase in line with the number of smartphone sales around the world. According to the latest research from Gartner, published on 14 February 2012, total smartphone sales in 2011 reached 472 million units and accounted for 31 per cent [...]
There are approximately 5,082,665,820 mobile phones in use around the world today. Mobile phone ownership around the world is clearly highlighted in the pie chart below. We, have, however, also broken down mobile phone use by region for those countries for which data on mobile phone ownership is available.
Unlike other business users of SMS Payments, charities are usually given the full value of the donation. With other business users, the mobile payment provider will charge a transaction fee. Mobile payment providers usually waive this fee for charities to ensure that the charity gets the full benefit of the [...]
When you ask anyone about premium SMS they will usually think of the companies that you used to see on television offering ringtones, wallpaper, games, photos or dating sites that people could download to their mobile phones. With these companies, SMS payments very quickly got a very bad reputation. Some [...]