African Development Bank has said that mobile telephone consumption in the some parts of the African continent presents huge commercial and business opportunities for the continent's banks and their merchant partners, saying that consumption will rise in the near future.According to the AfDb new report titled: Mobile Africa Report 2011, there were fewer than two million mobile phone users in the continent 13 years ago. The number grew to over 400 million in 2009. In Tanzania, official figures show that mobile users increased from about 36,000 in 1998 to 21.2 million at the end of March this year.The number is projected to reach 36.6 million by 2015.'Banks and other providers now recognise the potential of reaching millions of prospective customers, especially the rural population who account for more than 60 per cent of Africa's total population and have no access to banking services,' authors of the report note.'An increasing number of banks and financial institutions are using mobile advertising to share information and promote services, as financial institutions embrace mobile phones as a distinct channel - not just a supplement to PC banking - their number-one challenge is the same as they faced when first rolling out online banking: consumer confidence,' they add.In countries such as Kenya and South Africa, researches indicate that users have a higher propensity to make e-commerce and m-commerce transactions with 46 per cent of Kenyan and 43 per cent of South African users having made remote purchases via mobile Internet, fixed Internet and telephone respectively.The most popular items for remote purchases are downloads and virtual gifts, with 25.99 per cent of South Africans and 30.13 per cent of Kenyan's polled in a recent survey having purchased these items.With a successful mobile banking platform and an effective education, more awareness can lead to greater demand for m-commerce services. Other m-commerce services on African users' wish-lists include buying tickets (movies, transport), buying groceries and paying restaurant bills.Experts argue that this provides many opportunities for banks to partner with merchants such as cinema operators, supermarket chains and even fast food or restaurant outlets.In South Africa, Standard Chartered allows consumers to use their phones to check their bank account balance, manage credit cards or loans, pay bills, transfer money between accounts and more. However consumers are often required to register first from a PC before being able to bank with a phone.'When done correctly, mobile banking can create and grow new markets, enabling consumers in a variety of settings to save money and pay bills and in the process create value in communities.'Four years ago, mobile operator Safaricom launched M-Pesa in Kenya. The mobile company, which introduced the first mobile payment scheme in Africa on March 6, 2007, has since witnessed this service being introduced in several African countries by other mobile operators, including its competitors in Kenya.Mobile payment services have now been launched in South Africa, Madagascar, Uganda, Cte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Tanzania. By early this year M-Pesa in Kenya was used by 10 million people around the country had transferred Ksh135.38 billion ($1.8 billion) representing about five per cent of GDP.In Tanzania, M-Pesa, which was launched in 2008, has over two million customers, who are served through a network of 10,000 agents.'Since its launch in 2008, M-Pesa has played an instrumental role in changing the way money is sent, saved, and used to buy daily needs, by Vodacom customers across the country. Over the last three years, the M-Pesa mobile money solution has become ingrained in the lives of Vodacom customers,' Vodacom Tanzania said last month in a statement when announcing that it now has 10 million mobile phone users.'The key to M-Pesa's success, in Kenya and a growing number of countries, is the African love affair with the cell phone. Sometime in 2011, the continent will cross a threshold of mobile phone use, with one mobile phone for every African adult,' reads a part of the mobile report.According to research firm Juniper, the number of active users of mobile money services in the world is predicted to double in the next two years, exceeding 200 million by 2013. Nearly 40 per cent active users in 2015 are estimated be in the Africa and Middle East region.'Consumers in Africa are looking for a robust e-commerce solution that delivers security, accessibility, acceptance, ability and a global reach,' says Mr Manoj Kohil, Airtel chief executive officer and joint managing director.Currently it is estimated that Africa has close to 500 million mobile phone users and an unbanked population of 230 million households. It is expected that by 2014, Africa will see 56 per cent mobile penetration.But East African banks are proving slow to embrace the Internet, and systems that take mobile e-commerce payments, reported Kenya's leading software developers at the recent AITEC Banking and Mobile Money Conference in Nairobi.Cell phone penetration is estimated at 98 percent in South Africa. According to the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) mobile phone penetration in Tanzania stood at 47 per cent last year'Interestingly, in Africa, some consumers might not have shoes, but they have a cell phone,' according to Mr Brian Richardson, a former banker and founder of mobile payment services firm Wizzit of South Africa.By the end of 2008, the company had an estimated 250,000 customers in South Africa, and today it has two million customers across Africa and Europe. Customers can use their cell phones for such functions as viewing bank statements, sending money and paying bills, all with low transaction fees.Mobile banking is an example of cell phones being used in innovative ways to bypass the gaps in traditional infrastructure in Africa ' in this case the shortage of bricks-and mortar banks in rural areas, and lack of Internet access.'It's very difficult to build a sustainable, viable economy when the bulk of your population is unbanked. There is the equivalent of $2 billion under mattresses in South Africa at any time. If even a portion of that was in banks, it would have a huge impact on the economy,' Mr Richardson argues.
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