IBS Journal Supplement 2015


Game of phones


While there remains the risk of disintermediation, some banks are moving centre stage in mobile financial services. As a result, in this rapidly evolving sector, the lines are becoming ever more blurred. Telcos are behaving like banks, banks are behaving like telcos, retailers are behaving like both. While it’s hard to predict the winners, it seems consumers can only benefit from the competition.


The coming together of the banking and telecoms worlds can be seen ever more clearly, although it remains uncertain who will be the winners and losers. Banks are becoming telcos (Equity Bank in Kenya is a prime example, taking on M-Pesa). Some banks are making acquisitions (such as Swipp, a mobile payments service owned by a number of Danish banks which towards the end of last year bought Paii,


an equivalent set up by four mobile opera- tors). And regulators are lowering the bar- riers to entry (such as in India, where there is now a category of ‘payments banks’, which don’t actually have to be banks at all). This is all in parallel with what is going on with retailers’ e-wallets. On the one hand, there remains a clear danger of banks being disintermedi- ated. On the other, some banks – such as Equity Bank and with the Swipp/Paii deal – are moving to the centre of mobile finan- cial services and it is the telcos that look as though they are being sidelined, reverting to the role of pure network operators.


‘Every mobile wallet and payment provider faces the same challenge, of building the right ecosystem.’


Jonathan Kaftzan, Amdocs


©HLundgaard, Commons Wikimedia 14 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


analysis: mobile banking


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