Mobile Banking - Innovative Companies Make Inroads and Improve Lives

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

Mobile is changing the way people bank, particularly in communities where people never banked before.

A BuzzCity survey of consumers in twenty markets across four continents finds that nearly 1 in 3 mobile users find m-banking to be easy and useful.

And there are now at least nine countries where the number of registered mobile money accounts has surpassed traditional bank accounts, according to a report released at the 2014 Mobile World Congress.

Traditional banks have the biggest market share, but young upstarts – non-banks and mobile banks – are catching the attention – and money – of people from Bangladesh to Ghana and Guatemala.

Mobile Payments Come of Age

By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)

More working adults use mobile payments to buy things and pay their bills than cheques, according to the latest BuzzCity global survey. Mobile payments are also rapidly gaining on debit and credit cards. (Mobile payments are actually already more common when it comes to bill payments, but not yet for commercial transactions.)

Think about this for a moment.

Cheques were likely first used in the Middle East more than 2300 years ago.

Mobile commerce and mobile payments didn't exist until 1997.

It took centuries - well, millennium actually - for cheque usage to really take off. By the time of my parent's generation, billions of cheques were being issued annually and these rectangular pieces of paper were the preferred means of payment for many people, particularly in North America, India, Oceania and parts of Europe.

Mobile payments meanwhile have come a long way over the past sixteen years, when the first two mobile-enabled Coca-Cola machines accepted payment via SMS in Finland.

Let's take a closer look now at the stats and some examples from around the world.