Page 60 - State-of-the-Industry-2013
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State OF the induStry 2013
Mobile credit
The MMU Deployment Tracker reveals 17 live services, 2 launches in 2013. in addition, 8 survey respondents reported they were plan-
ning to launch mobile credit within the next twelve months.
Multiple mobile credit services can be ofered on one mobile money deployment, such as m-Shwari (service ofered by Kenya’s Safa-
ricom) and musoni (service ofered by a third party provider – see text box 18), proving that these services are not strictly the domain of
mobile money deployments and that there is an opportunity for other third party providers to jump on board.
In terms of the sales model, the deployments in our survey do not use mobile money agents, relying on a more sophisticated cus-
tomer acquisition model than mobile money. For example, musoni uses cash-less branches for clients to visit, meet staf and discuss
issues at hand. however, all deployments require users to have mobile money accounts, as mobile money wallets are used for all loan
disbursements and repayments.
Algorithms using airtime purchases and call history data for credit scoring allow providers to measure purchasing power and reliabil-
ity, lower the cost of customer acquisition, and reduce default rates, all of which improve the ability of both traditional micro fnance
institutions and mobile credit providers to ofer credit services to greater numbers of people (see text box 19 for more information).
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