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Banks, telcos target the unbanked population with new services

The international remittance market will reach $610 million this year

ORLANDO–Digital financial services will represent a huge business opportunity for banks and telecoms operators in the comings years due to the increasing penetration of mobile telephony in the global unbanked population, the Amdocs Mobile Financial Services Marketing Director Jonathan Kaftzan told reporters during the Amdocs Americas Summit.

The executive said that the mobile payment market will be worth $2.8 trillion by 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.2%. The executive also highlighted that there are 2 billion unbanked people globally. From this total, only 411 million currently use mobile money services. “In the United States, a total of 70 million people are either unbanked or underbanked,” he added.

With the World Bank citing the international remittance market is expected to reach $610 million this year, it represents an attractive and fast revenue stream for mobile financial services providers, the executive said. According to the World Bank, the total value of money sent to developing markets reached $440 million last year and is expected to reach $480 million in 2017. Amdocs also highlighted that 5.47 million people will own a mobile phone by 2018, representing an increase of 12% from today.

Amdocs and Juniper Research recently carried out a survey of nearly 3,000 individuals in the U.S., U.K. and Germany with the aim of getting a better understanding of the consumer’s perceptions and preferences for international money transfer, international top-up and international bill payments.

According to the study, 83% of the surveyed people said that they would be prepared to send money via mobile.

Amdocs’ portfolio of mobile financial services includes digital banking solutions, which support real-time financial services, settlement and clearance with a financial-grade platform that provides built-in checks, high security and easy configurations. Amdocs also offers digital commerce solutions for consumers, including airtime top-up, bill payment, P2P, ticketing and more. Business commerce services includes loyalty & gifting, merchant payments (P2B), B2B supply chain management and cash disbursement (G2P, B2P).

“People now have access to insurance, savings, loans and credits without the need to have a bank account. They can access to this through a mobile phone and service providers can offer these mobile financial services. Another very interesting market is the mobile money transfer,” he said.

The company said that a total of 16 million mobile financial transactions are carried out each year globally through Amdocs solutions and it currently serves more than 30 financial institutions and service providers globally.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro covers Global Carriers and Global Enterprise IoT. Prior to RCR, Juan Pedro worked for Business News Americas, covering telecoms and IT news in the Latin American markets. He also worked for Telecompaper as their Regional Editor for Latin America and Asia/Pacific. Juan Pedro has also contributed to Latin Trade magazine as the publication's correspondent in Argentina and with political risk consultancy firm Exclusive Analysis, writing reports and providing political and economic information from certain Latin American markets. He has a degree in International Relations and a master in Journalism and is married with two kids.