IBS Journal November 2015


The world speaks The talk is opened up to the audience, who (by a quick straw poll) came from every continent apart from South America.


One audience member from India


says his country had the same prob- lem with cash disbursement – and ‘they didn’t want any hands in-between’ tak- ing the money. The ‘poor people’ in question didn’t have any ID and so the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was created in 2009 to help. The UIDAI set up an ID program


whereby fingerprints or photos might be linked to a mobile phone. (Despite poverty, most people can afford to buy a cheap mobile phone.) With this system in place, they could receive money. As Maule and the audience inter-


act, he concedes the issue of creating these fintech jobs is ‘chaotic’. He sees it as a ‘spider web or like a Jackson Pollock painting’. It looks complicated and with- out rhyme or reason, but there are solu- tions and patterns if people look hard enough. With that in mind, Maule conducts


a group exercise for the audience. Here, the DFI wants to get feedback on a ‘modern payments platform’. One audience member says the


transfer and use of cash in developing countries is ‘always subject to corrup- tion, yet the mobile phone is every- where’. His group’s idea is that when people buy phones they have to pro- vide biometric data to the shop. The shop also needs to ensure that only one phone has one set of data attached, to ensure the person is genuine – other- wise the shop will be fined. The group believes this threat of a cash penalty on a shop will ensure some measure of success. Another idea consists of providing


ATMs that will dispense one or two dol- lars – a ‘super-low cost network’ – and banks could start trialling it now. One group proposed a ‘marketplace’, either on the web or a noticeboard, where ref-


© Sibos


ugees can be matched to people who can help or provideclothes, and so on. One person points out that com-


panies like Google and Facebook are already looking at providing connectiv- ity inside the refugee camps. It’s some- thing that Mark Zuckerberg has dis- cussed in the past.


‘Audacious goals’ The DFI welcomes all these ideas and the audience’s ability to formulate them in a short space of time. In return, it outlines its three ‘audacious goals’. The first, called ‘Project Iran’, seeks


to help the one million refugees inside Iran. The DFI is looking to work with UNICEF to ensure these children don’t become financially excluded. The DFI says they are ‘trying to work on the mechanics’ of this project. Next is a ‘refugee fintech lab’. This


is seen as ‘more complicated’ and envi- sions bringing fintech problems to the refugees and asking them to devise solutions. Maule says ‘the next Steve Jobs could be in a camp’. The DFI says if this internet connectivity (that Goog- le and Facebook have talked about) becomes a reality inside camps, then it’s workable. The last one is to ‘dream big’ and


construct a ‘refugee bank’. The idea is to provide payment solutions on a global


level for the refugees. The DFI says it has to do more work on the infrastructure, costs and getting a licence.


Time and money The DFI will release a ‘white paper’ on 1st November that examines financial inclusion and refugees for those interested in learning more. It adds it has attended three conferences so far and is looking at more events to get its message out to even more people. The DFI is asking all the fintech


companies at Sibos and beyond to help.


Maule ends the speech by asking


the audience ‘what’s your story?’ and ‘what will you do when you walk out?’ The choice is yours.


Day 3: Looking for winners If blockchain was the main word of Sibos, start-ups and innovation came in joint second. There was always a lot happening with these two subjects and it was good to see a young crowd out and about. With that in mind, Hyperledger won


the Innotribe Start-up Challenge, which occurs yearly at the conference. The company is a distributed ledger


platform and fought off 11 other com- petitors to win a tidy $50,000 in prize money.


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© IBS Intelligence 2015


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sibos 2015


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