Ademola Adewale,
Executive Director, Operations & Technology,
Keystone Bank Limited

By Ademola Adewale

The next phase of banking sector reforms and consolidations in Africa’s most populous nation will be driven, not by the industry regulator or by industry or market forces but, by technology, technology and technology.

Computing technology has become a key business driver for Keystone Bank as we embark on a comprehensive overhaul of our systems, processes and human resource assets and capabilities.

Like financial services institutions all over the world, Nigerian banks are increasingly realizing the transformative powers that technology can inject into their products/service delivery offerings and by extension, their reputations and expanding balance sheets.

Technology has become a must-have tool. Previously perceived as a good-to-have box of machines used to automate back-end operational processes, computing technology has now permeated all the facets of banking operations from the back office IT and computational functions, to the banking halls, right through to the fingers of customers at the ATM or Point-Of-Sales (PoS) terminals.

Beyond their roles as financial intermediaries and corporate entities helping to drive and support government’s nation-wide economic growth and development agenda through their investment, trade financing and deposit mobilization activities, Nigerian banks are also beginning to see tangible benefits in-house as they experience increased efficiencies and a revamp of their corporate cultures. This is the silent experience of technology utilization at Keystone Bank, a mid-sized Nigerian financial institution licensed in August 2011.

At Keystone Bank, a new dawn beckons. Thanks to our investments in the latest, best-in-class server technology, end-to-end implementation and excellent partnership and support from IBM, old ways of “functioning” have given way to new IT systems, a fresh and innovative service delivery culture, and a customer-centric operational attitude.

Our vision of setting the pace in financial services delivery predicated on robust technology platform has become a reality.

Based on the implementation of the IBM Power Systems and other top rated banking solutions, Keystone Bank has been positioned as one of the leading banks in the use of technology for delivery of excellent services and innovative solutions in the industry.

As a technology driven bank, the IBM Power Systems Enterprise Servers have improved the up-time of the Bank’s Automated Teller Machines, PoS machine, and the speed of e-banking transactions; we are, thus, well positioned to deliver excellent services in support of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Cash-less policy.

We are now in the era of Big Data. Industry statistics estimate that banks in emerging markets spend between 7-10 percent of their operating income on managing data.

Big Data imposes a fresh set of challenges for banks – the integrity and security of customers transactional information and data, data mining and analytics, business growth and exponential growth of data volumes, just to list a few. Our extant working relationship with IBM has proven to be timely tonic for the Bank.

Keystone Bank’s IBM Power Systems have enhanced the bank’s computing capabilities. Our back-end operational processes have significantly improved to higher efficiency levels hitherto unseen in the history of the bank and our ability to service internal and external stakeholders of the bank has been strengthened.

Keystone Bank’s history reflects an enduring tradition of embracing change. As the Bank’s management team prepares for its next phase of business transformation and growth, technology will no doubt enable it deploy Smarter Banking concepts and principles.

Technorati Tags: africa, banking, Big Data, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Keystone Bank, smarter banking, smarter commerce, transactions

Miles Nosler, Student, Texas State University

By Miles Nosler

Over the last few years, whenever I saw an IBM Smarter Planet commercial on television I wondered what was behind things like Smarter Transportation? Smarter Cities? Smarter Commerce?

Since then I’ve come to understand what the Smarter Planet concept is about – tackling Big issues with smarter, interconnected technologies to improve the way we live and work. But, it didn’t truly sink in until I started crunching some Big Data with an IBM mainframe. Let me explain. 

If someone told me I would take the top spot among 4,600 very smart students competing in IBM’s Master the Mainframe contest, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s exactly what I did, and now I have in-demand technical skills on my resume that are landing me job interviews. 

Miles Nosler with IBM ‘Master the Mainframe’ Award.

I first heard about the contest in 2011 at Texas State University where I’ve been taking evening classes to complete my Computer Science degree while working full time as a software engineer.

The contest rules specified that no previous mainframe experience was necessary, so I signed up and actually did better than I anticipated, earning an honorable mention in the competition. I was immediately hooked on the raw computing power of the mainframe and its ability to crunch massive amounts of Big Data.

The contest is open to high school and college students across North America (and in dozens of countries worldwide) and is run in three parts with each designed to get progressively harder.

The first part introduces students to the mainframe and gets them comfortable accessing it remotely. The second introduces advanced commands and system setup techniques, and the third part has students applying these skills to solve a real world business problem.

When IBM announced the 2012 contest, I jumped at the chance to compete so I could add more mainframe experience to my resume. I worked hard to be one of the first 2,500 students to get a 100 percent score on part one, and advance to the second part where I was one of the first 60 contestants to get a perfect score. 

The third and final part was the toughest and most exciting. I had to apply my new skills in a real world scenario where a bank migrates Big Data to a new mainframe while keeping its doors and Web site open to customers.

What impressed me most on the final part was the mainframe’s ability to effortlessly crunch this data and get it where it needed to be inside the business. That way, the bank could offer more personalized products and services based on what customers were telling them. Aha! Smarter Banking!

It had taken me weeks to solve this challenge, and I earned the top spot among all of the competing students to get it 100 percent right.

As the first place winner, I won cool prizes including a tablet computer and an all-expense paid trip to IBM Poughkeepsie where they make mainframes.

I posted my freshly-minted resume on IBM’s System z job board and immediately caught the attention of two potential employers looking for candidates with mainframe and Big Data skills. I’ve had two successful interviews so far and expect job offers will soon follow.

The experience I gained competing in IBM’s Master the Mainframe contest provided me with marketable IT skills in a hot job market. I can even tell an employer what Smarter Banking means.

I encourage all high school and college students to participate in next year’s contest. No experience necessary. Check out the official Facebook page for updates.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, IBM Master the Mainframe, IBM Smarter Financing, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Texas State University, Watson

Charaka Kithulegoda, CIO, ING DIRECT

By Charaka Kithulegoda

It’s estimated that there are more smartphones on the planet than humans. By 2016, more than 10 billion smartphones will be in use around the global. And Canadians are leading that growth, with more than half of Canadian smartphone users banking from their mobile device – and that number grows even higher when looking at those between 18 – 34 years of age.

Our customers expect to be able to connect with their friends and family, browse and shop and of course, bank from their mobile devices. As the mobile marketplace continues to grow and expand, mobile banking is not just a convenient option for our clients, but a must have. So how do we provide our customers with easy access to their money at any time, wherever they are?

Working with IBM, ING DIRECT Canada has developed a long-term, secure strategy around our mobile architecture supporting multiple devices. This has allowed us to fast-track the delivery of mobile banking applications for all mobile devices. For example, our iPad application, developed with IBM, has a dashboard view that users can customize based on their frequently-transacted activities.

But we not only embraced mobile banking, we took it a step further and embraced social banking – providing our customers the ability to bank and transact from wherever they are and this includes social applications like Facebook and Twitter.

Our Facebook application, for instance, makes banking easy and secure. Customers can go from chatting with friends to checking out their accounts with the click of a key. Our customers were already logged onto Facebook, interacting with friends and family. Why make our clients log out, just to log back into our mobile site? Instead, we made it easy for our customers to bank where they already are.

Social banking has also helped us encourage our customer to save, through a program called Small Sacrifices. In a recent survey, we found that 52 percent of Canadians said that if they were able to better visualize what foregoing their daily, weekly and monthly spending on non-essential purchases looked like, they would save them over the short and long term, they would change their spending habits.

With client preferences at the heart of our business, we helped our customers visualize how cutting out everyday indulgences, — i.e. Small Sacrifices — could lead to big savings over the long term. It’s simple, but very effective. First, users choose what small sacrifice they can make, like passing on a daily coffee purchase. Then users decide which goal to redirect the money to, like their retirement fund or savings account. Once the user specifies how much money they spend on their average, Small Sacrifices creates a chart illustrating how much could be amassed in five- and 25 years by saving that amount weekly. The next time a user is tempted to spend on their non-essential purchase, they can choose to instead redirect that money to a savings or retirement account with one simple click.

At ING DIRECT, we understand that mobile technology is here to stay. It’s changing how we live our lives by helping make everyday tasks easier and more convenient.

Clients are telling us what they want and how they want to use our products and services. We have embraced this rapid evolution by providing open and engaging solutions that offer immediacy and simplicity through a highly contextual experience.　

Technorati Tags: IBM Smarter Planet, mobile applications, mobile banking, mobile computing, smarter banking, social banking, social business, social media

Alejandro Valenzuela, CEO, Grupo Financiero Banorte

By Alejandro Valenzuela

Not many companies can say they’ve been in business for more than a century. As the CEO for Grupo Financiero Banorte, better known as Banorte – Ixe, one of Mexico’s largest banks, I’m proud to say we’ve been serving our customers since 1899. You can imagine how many changes Banorte–Ixe has gone through the course of 114 years—where the exchange of monies once came in the form or bartering and loans were handwritten on paper, banking is now marked by national currencies and automatic tracking through intricate technology systems. Today’s banking industry looks and operates in a very different way to how we began.

Every transformation we’ve underwent as a company has been in response to the changing needs of our customers. We started as a very small local bank in Monterrey, and here we are, 2013, as the third financial institution in México. We find our business undergoing yet another shift, but again, with the same focus in mind: our customers.

Over the next 10 years, Banorte–Ixe will partner with IBM to create the best experience our clients will have witnessed over the past century. Through the utilization of Big Data, analytics, cloud, social business technologies and marketing automation capabilities, we are confident that this new era for our institution will transform and improve customer attraction, satisfaction and retention.

In fact, Banorte–Ixe is the only national bank that is still controlled and operated by Mexicans. There’s a reason for that—no one knows and understands our customers better than we do.

That’s why as we dive deeper into a world marked by digital interactions, Banorte – Ixe, as a company must provide those same experiences to our customers. Whether a customer is visiting a local branch, using the neighborhood ATM or signing onto our online banking tool, we want their experience to be a personalized one.

In the banking environment, every single transaction we make with a customer is a piece of information. Banking is unique in the sense that our industry already has an enormous amount of unstructured and structured data at hand—and in Banorte–Ixe’s case, more than a century worth of data. In light of this, we plan to capitalize on all this information to make sure we’re offering our customers personalized and superior services they not only expect, but that they clearly deserve.

While Banorte–Ixe is focused on creating the best possible experience for our customers, we also want to improve our own internal operations, how we function as a company, and how our more than 25,000 employees interact with our customers. This partnership with IBM will support our institution to improve organization-wide efficiencies, and help us advance our strategic goals to increase profits.

This partnership goes beyond technological innovation; it implies a significant change in our way of thinking and a profound processes transformation. We want to become one of the best banks in the world, in terms of personalized services.

At Banorte–Ixe, we will continue to invest in talent, infrastructure and in technological tools necessary to attract, retain and serve our customers by offering value enhancing financial services. With our customers at the center of every decision we made, we continue to keep them at the core, as they are the ones that truly decide with which institution they will choose to undertake their financial services. We want to strike to be their best option.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, cloud computing, Financial Services, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, mobile, smarter banking, smarter business

IBM Chairman and CEO, Ginni Rometty at the IBM CIO Leadership Exchange in Johannesburg, South Africa, today.

Africa is already well known for leapfrogging the rest of the world in use of mobile money, but African countries now have another big leapfrogging opportunity: big data analytics.

Across the continent, there’s a tremendous potential for using data analytics in powerful new ways in a wide range of industries and domains, from telecommunications and banking to transportation and healthcare.

The big data opportunity for Africa came into sharp focus this week when IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and key members of her executive team visited Africa to meet with clients and government leaders. “Going forward, data is going to be THE source of competitive advantage,” Rometty told a South African audience.

When Anesh Govender reported for duty as Santam’s head of operations for finance, his boss told him that he wanted to do more with less. Govender quickly spotted data as his leverage point. “I was amazed how much data was available but how little of it was being used, ” he said. Govender was one of the presenters at IBM’s South African gathering.

Anesh Govender, Santam Ltd.

He decided to completely overhaul the claims processing system. In the past, every claim went through the same steps of being reviewed manually by staff members. Today, they’re all fed into a predictive analytics software program that channels routine claims into a queue for quick action. The others go through deeper analysis that takes into account not just the current claim but a lot more information about the customer and their past claim activities. Computer algorithms search for patterns that suggests the claims might be fraudulent. One example: Fraudsters typically start with small false claims and, if they’re successful, submit larger ones.

Govender’s staff has tuned the algorithms so they identify the maximum amount of false claims without producing too many false positives—which require extra work by the claims processing staff. Today, they kick out only 1% of claims for deep fraud analysis, and about 30% of them are fraudulent.

The system has indeed made it possible for Santam to do more with less. While the volume of claims has risen 8% since the new system was put in place, the staff level has stayed level. Before, it took at least three days to settle legitimate claims. Now Santam clears them within an hour of receiving them.

Looking ahead, the most promising of the big data leapfrogging opportunities for Africa lie within the telecom industry. Mobile phones are now widespread, as are SMS based services such as mobile payments and money transfer. Next, observers expect rapid adoption of affordable smart phones capable of handling more sophisticated applications, such as social networking. It all adds up to a massive amount of data in the hands of the mobile carriers about what people are doing with their phones and where they are. “Businesses that find opportunities in data will do better,” says Michael Rhodin, senor vice president of IBM’s software solutions group. “These businesses will use the combination of data sourced from customer relationship management, operations and talent management.”

What will the carriers do with all that data? For starters, they can look for patterns in customers’ behavior that suggests they’re about to drop their service. So-called “churn” is expensive for carriers. But, alerted that particular customers are dissatisfied, carriers can approach them with offers that might entice them to stay on. Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile carrier, which now has a foothold on the African continent, already does this kind of analysis on its home turf.

As the mobile market continues to develop, the carriers will be in a strong position to offer their customers new applications and services. They’ll not only own the relationship with the customer, but they’ll see data patterns in customer behavior that helps them anticipate customer’s needs. Marketers have long dreamed of being able to address not just market segments but individual customers. Big data could finally turn this dream into a reality.

And it could happen first in Africa.

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Related Link

Read about how Reading Companion inspires a love of reading in South African schools.

Technorati Tags: africa, IBM, Santam

Marcelo Lema, General Manager, Client Financing, IBM Global Financing

By Marcelo Lema

Technorati Tags: cloud, Global Financing, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, small business, Smarter Financing

Suresh K L, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Bank

By Suresh K L

Like many other countries in Africa, Ghana’s banking sector is in the midst of its most transformative phase.

The sector has expanded substantially over the last ten years, characterized by branch expansion and increased capitalization as financial institutions move to meet growing demand for consumer banking services across the country.

This is due to the continued economic growth, foreign investment, increasing diversification and a number of large investments in both the private and public sectors in Ghana and across Africa.

New technologies are helping to drive a wave of innovation across the African financial services sector as banks create new and accessible banking channels and take banking services to previously unbanked parts of society.

Banks can now reach customers in remote villages by providing them with a menu of services available on their mobile handsets. In more urban settings, customers can now enjoy new services such as mortgage financing and branchless banking as a result of the growing use of technology. This level of access to financial services was unprecedented just ten years ago.

Introducing new product lines such as mobile banking and mortgage products is pushing banks like ours to become more nimble and technology dependant in order to meet our clients needs more effectively.

Fidelity Bank in Ghana - the Head Office in Accra's Central Business District (credit: Fidelity Bank)

Our new data centre, which is housed in the Bank’s headquarters in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, has been designed with innovative advancements in energy-efficient data center management, business continuity and resiliency, as well as security and disaster recovery services.

We could have simply deployed more servers to handle the increased demand we knew would come from the market. Instead, we invested in an end-to-end solution, housed in a state-of-the-art data centre to build a new secure home for our Big Data needs.

We are confident that this new data centre will enable us to meet the continued growth in the Ghanaian banking sector and also put us in a position to better manage our risk, both critical factors as we push forward our agenda to list on the Ghanaian Stock Exchange.

Technorati Tags: africa, data centre, Financial Services, IBM smarter banking, IBM Smarter Planet, resiliency

Dennis Bancod, CIO, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation

By Dennis Bancod

Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), one of the leading private domestic commercial banks in thePhilippines, has grown rapidly over the last five years. To continue this momentum, we’ve set a goal of adding 10 million new customers by 2014. Many of these will include the so-called “unbanked” – farmers, small business owners and others in provinces of the Philippines where ATMs and bank branches are more scarce.

Technology and the transformation of our business model will be two of the most important drivers behind RCBC’s ability to bring banking to the masses.

Traditional banking technology and business models were developed around the characteristics of urban areas: high density of clients, relative proximity to cash distribution centers and the availability of  a telecommunications infrastructure, for example.

Not surprisingly, the economics of these models are not appropriate for serving clients in rural areas. Technology, however, has enabled new ways to interact with rural clients at significantly lower cost levels.

RCBC is teaming with IBM and Finacle from Infosys to transform our business and leverage new growth opportunities in an increasingly competitive consumer banking market. A new Finacle, IBM System z solution will provide the foundation RCBC needs to create value-added services that will increase customer adoption for our MyWallet electronic cash, debit and pre-paid cards, which gives the unbanked a great tool to conduct cashless transactions from their mobile devices or anywhere Visa cards are accepted.

The bank is targeting to grow our MyWallet card base by 4 million this year – more than doubling the 1.8 million users on-boarded last year. Among our initiatives to reach that goal are more partnerships with merchants that will lead to increased consumer acceptability and usage. The bank has already forged tie-ups with the Super 8 Grocery Warehouse chain, Enchanted Kingdom in Laguna, LBC Express Inc. and Mercury Drug. We plan more such partnerships in the months ahead.

RCBC also recently introduced a business loan program for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) called the Women’s Enterprise Loan developed specifically to address the needs of Filipina entrepreneurs. It’s one way the bank is responding to the government’s call to help empower local entrepreneurs through improved access to credit.

Since we re-launched it four years ago, RCBC’s SME Banking has expanded its portfolio by over three times to its present level of about P $15 billion. We are planning to expand total credits to this market to P $20 billion in the next 12 months.

RCBC is now positioned as a smarter bank, able to anticipate client needs and deliver innovative products to the unbanked and all our clients faster and more consistently than the competition. We are able to respond quickly and nimbly to changes in market conditions.

Technorati Tags: communications, IBM, mobile financial services, RCBC, smarter banking, Smarter Planet, unbanked

Steve Mills, IBM Senior Vice President & Group Executive, Software & Systems

By Steve Mills

The opportunities of Big Data are limitless for making business, the global economy and our society work better. The new reality is that Big Data has become one of our most valuable emerging natural resources.

This is due in large part to the economics around lower computing costs and the enormous advancements we’ve made in developing new technologies that can analyze data regardless of what kind, where it resides or how fast it is moving.

In financial services, Wall Street firms are generating five new research documents every minute. Nearly $100 billion in total sales are missed each year because retailers don’t have the right products in stock to meet customer demand. Earlier this month, the United Nations issued a report stating that the world has nearly as many cell phone subscribers as inhabitants.

These six billion global mobile phone subscribers are demanding unique and personalized offerings that match their individual lifestyles.

Applying analytics to these challenges is boosting economic competitiveness and defining new winners across business and government. Just think of a chief marketing officer who can glean valuable information on consumer sentiment from streaming social media as it happens. Using that information, the CMO can adjust marketing campaigns accordingly.

Big Data is a term that is used to describe the onslaught of information the world faces daily, and explores the growing volume, velocity, veracity and variety of data. While Big Data implies “a lot of data,” it also means being able to discern useful information from noise, trends from incomplete data, and the need to look at multiple facets of the data. 

These are exactly the types of challenges that IBM will be discussing this week at our seventh annual IBM Information on Demand and Business Analytics Forum (IOD12). The conference brings together more than 11,000 of the world’s leading experts to share insights and lessons gained by applying information management and analytics to Big Data. We’ll feature 700 technical sessions across several key tracks, 110 hands-on labs, and more than 300 client speakers exploring how Big Data is helping them gain competitive advantage.

In addition, we will introduce a series of new products and services to help clients continue to make sense of their data and use it in new and more meaningful ways. This includes predictive analytics software for healthcare providers that helps identify early intervention and coordinate patient care; a digital marketing analytics appliance for CMO’s to create more targeted campaigns; and new streaming analytics software that allows communications service providers to analyze network data 90 percent faster to reduce customer churn.

These new capabilities, combined with IBM’s newest member of the PureSystem family, PureData System, are helping businesses better meet their growing data challenges by reducing complexity and improving IT economics.

We recently released a study with Oxford University around Big Data adoption, validating these same key themes. The research showed that early adopters are gaining a competitive advantage with 63 percent of respondents citing Big Data and analytics as a competitive advantage. However, less than half are currently analyzing social media data.

Earlier this month, I had an opportunity to present a report from the TechAmerica Foundation Big Data Commission, of which I am co-chair, in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the report, entitled “Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government,” was to provide guidance to senior U.S. policy and decision makers on the promise of Big Data and the value it can deliver to governments and its citizens.

These findings suggest that governments and businesses are taking a pragmatic approach to Big Data by first focusing on the tremendous untapped value still locked away in internal systems. This is why the market for business analytics is growing faster than the overall IT industry. IDC estimates enterprises will invest more than $120 billion by 2015 to capture the impact of analytics across hardware, software, and services.

What was clear in our findings is universal for both government and business. Combining analytics and Big Data makes it easier for leaders of all types to understand the world around them better than ever before, predict what’s likely to happen in the future, and use that knowledge to make more informed decisions.

By the end of IOD 2012, I hope we will have shared IBM’s deep industry knowledge and showcased our leadership in Big Data and analytics. We have the opportunity to help businesses, governments, healthcare systems, and educational institutions take advantage of all of the information right in front of them, and make better, more effective decisions for themselves and the people they serve.

Join in on the conversation at #ibmiod. 

Technorati Tags: Big Data, business analytics, IBM, predicitve analytics, PureSystems, smarter analytics, Smarter Planet

Tony Mwai, Country General Manager, IBM East Africa

By Tony Mwai

Ten years ago, if workers in Kenya wanted to send money to relatives across the country, they had two options – either pay a courier to take their wages back to their village or travel themselves, often spending a hefty portion of the wages on bus fare and then losing a day’s pay.

Today, in a just under a second, over 14 million Kenyans can send and receive money to each other in whichever part of the country they are, all thanks to mobile money transfer solutions.

Over the last five years, more than $16 billion has moved between phones in this country, indicating the untapped demand for access to reliable and affordable financial services in the palm of Kenyans. 

With similar stories being replicated across the continent, it is not far-fetched to say that over the last five years, mobile financial solutions have allowed Africa to leapfrog its developmental hurdles to become one of the most advanced adopters of mobile money solutions globally.

Mobile banking has taken off in many African countries, but especially where it can take a significant amount of time and money to get to the nearest bank branch office. Furthermore, the cost of traditional banking in Africa is high for many citizens and banking regulations are strict. For example, many banks require proof of regular income before an account can be opened – preventing many people from obtaining and maintaining bank accounts.

The high growth and penetration rates of mobile telephony inAfricaare transforming cell phones into “mini” banks. Mobile banking is becoming an increasingly affordable and cost effective means of bringing large portions of the population, heretofore excluded, into the financial services market.

According to the World Bank, the vast majority of African families – close to 80 percent – do not have formal bank accounts. Mobile phones, however, are almost everywhere. By some estimates mobile penetration in South Africa alone is at about 90 percent.

In developing countries with a low banking and high mobile phone penetration, mobile wallets can bring basic payment services to those under, as well as un-served, in banking. Mobile banking provides a powerful way to deliver services to citizens who have a cell phone but no bank account – breaking down geographical constraints and offering consumer advantages such as immediacy, security and efficiency.

Often starting with money transfers, mobile banking services become more sophisticated over time to include paying for bills and goods, pre-paid debit cards, ATM withdrawals and salary disbursements.

As mobile banking continues to rise in popularity, financial institutions will have to focus on making the consumer transition from mobile, to branch, to call center, as seamless as possible, which can be a difficult proposition. And with so much competition and no universally-accepted delivery model, how can banks compete for the individual consumer?

For starters, mobile banking technologies that provide a strong return to financial institutions enable businesses to address the security concerns of consumers. New business models are also emerging that address consumer needs, while delivering banking services through mobile money platforms.

Furthermore, partnerships between banks, financial institutions, microfinance institutions and the mobile industry are emerging to support a single integrated framework to cut costs in order to provide consumers with the convenience of banking from home, the farm or other remote areas.

An effective mobile wallet solution can help banks grow and generate new sources of revenue, help merchants reduce payment processing costs and fraud risk, and make the payment process safer, faster and more convenient for consumers.

Customer account information stored directly and securely in the cloud, instead of shared over the phone and passed into the POS terminal, can enhance the level of security as well as reduce the risk of fraud. The cloud-based approach gives consumers peace of mind that their information is private and their transactions are safe. In addition, retailers don’t need to contend with the cost and complexity of maintaining PCI compliance for cloud-based mobile wallet transactions.

As banks are recognizing the potential of reaching millions of prospective new customers, the popularity of mobile banking in Africa could have implications beyond linking the non-banking public to financial networks.

Not only is mobile banking filling the gap in the financial services market, it is enabling a growing number of people to access financial services for the first time, enlivening the entrepreneurial spirit to drive economic growth throughout the continent.

Technorati Tags: africa, IBM, mobile banking, mobile financial services, mobile money, smarter banking, smarter computing, Smarter Planet