MobiFin Optimized VPS Tanzania Limited s Business Process OCT OCT 2014
Introduction Insight into Tanzania's Mobile Money Market Tanzania's population is estimated to be nearly 47 million and 74% of Tanzanians reside in rural areas. 35% of households in Tanzania have at least one m-money user. 33% of households have at least one registered m-money user. m-money services are most frequently used to send or receive remittances as a part of regular financial support to or from family members living in different households. m-money is one of the most popular savings instrument. Half of households with m- money users use an m-money account to save money. The most common types of payments done via m-money include school fees, government fees & taxes, utility bills and salaries. Households with m-money users engage in a wider variety of financial activities and are more likely to save money and buy insurance than the households that do not use m- money services. www.panamaxil.com 02
Challenges Challenges/obstacles faced by Customer VPS Tanzania Limited, a leading retail network company into distributing products electronically and mobile money services in Tanzania. The company's primary focus is into Electronic Payment Services, Mobile Financial Services, Mobile Money, Telecommunications Service Provider and Ticketing in Tanzania. However, the company was facing several hitches in running the business smoothly due to lack of local infrastructure. When VPS Tanzania Limited started out, the local market could only offer USSD based payment solution for mobile money. However, USSD based payment is an expensive option for smaller financial transactions and is less reliable as well. Therefore, the company was seeking a better and reliable way of transacting in mobile money. One of the biggest challenges that the company had was non-availability of any secured platform for making money collection. The company had to rely on the agents who needed to move out for collection of money and this gave rise to several risks such as theft and fraud, also there wasn't any traceability of the financial transactions that took place. Poor data connectivity created lot of hassles in carrying out the business activities efficiently. Hence, The Company was looking for a flexible and secured solution that could even out such issues of expensiveness, security, frauds, theft, and poor connectivity. www.panamaxil.com 03
Our Solution VPS Tanzania Limited, a leading retail network company into distributing products electronically and mobile money services in Tanzania adopted MobiFin in 2011. MobiFin proved to be one solution for all of the challenges that VPS Tanzania Limited was seeking to overcome in their business. Some of the Consumer Adoptions, Customer Benefits and Business Rewards experienced by VPS Tanzania Limited in serving its patrons in Tanzania using MobiFin over the last 2 and half years are mentioned as under. Utility Bill Payment Postpaid Bill Payment Pin-less Top-up Subscriber to subscriber Top-up Self Topup Resellers find MobiFin is easy to on-board because the only investment required is e-value purchase, compare this with the POS solution which has an on-boarding cost of approximately $300 USD. The benefit of such low cost of initiation allows people like bus drivers, grocery shop owners, etc. to become resellers effortlessly. Electronic Voucher Distribution MobiFin is built over the existing Mobile Money Network, which brings all those who own a mobile under the potential market segment of MobiFin users/ resellers. The Top-up and Bill Payment module of MobiFin allowed the Company to get rid of physical recharge cards for Airtime Top-up. MobiFin can be efficiently integrated with various service providers and can run them simultaneously and the software complies with industry standard security parameters. Hence, making it the most secured platform for dealing in mobile money. VPS Tanzania Limited has about 3600+ resellers registrations, out of which about 2500 are ACTIVE RESELLERS. This has definitely added to the revenues earned from the reseller/ agent network, but has also met the corporate vision of financial inclusion & branchless banking in Tanzania. Our solution facilitated VPS Tanzania Limited in making the process of registering the resellers/agents easy and simple which was earlier cumbersome due to heavy paperwork. We provided an android based application on our platform that made electronic registration in the form of KYC & enrollment process quick, easy and efficient. The registration process became faster and enabled VPS Tanzania Limited in shortening the time and effort needed to register the user/ agent to start making payments/ transactions using MobiFin. There are about 31 cities in Tanzania, out of which about 15 cities have agents that now use MobiFin. The low on-boarding cost of MobiFin is a key factor in driving adoption and financial inclusion of these traditionally neglected tribes. www.panamaxil.com 04
Customer Benefits User-Friendly Interface - MobiFin has an easy-to-use interface and integrates with heterogeneous devices, platforms & systems. Integrated Thermal Printer - This is an advantage in cases of transaction delays and issue resolutions. Also, psychologically consumers find their money safe when a cash transaction is accompanied with a paper receipt. MobiFin addresses this by integrating the mobile apps with low-cost, low-energy Bluetooth printers that prints a receipt for every transaction at an agency. Mobile money collection account- a convenient and easy platform for transacting in mobile money. Business Continuity - Agents could instantly avail e-value using existing Mobile Money operator for Business continuity anytime and anywhere. Integrated with mpesa - MobiFin's integration with Mobile Money platforms like mpesa, brought the unreachable corners of the country within reach, and eliminated the risks associated with cash transportation. Convenient for making Utility Payments - Make various types of utility bill payments like prepaid electricity, MNO airtime, DTH services recharge and other utility payments. Testimonial We've been in a business relationship with Panamax for their MobiFin software solution since long and the journey so far has been very good and rewarding. Panamax team provides us with a perfect technology platform and exceptional customer service. I am sure our business relationship will flourish to greater heights in the future. Kailas K. Bhattbhatt (Managing Director) VPS Tanzania Limited www.panamaxil.com 05