DUBLIN – The telco industry is “about to have a once in a lifetime opportunity to establish sticky mobile money relationships with customers,” according to Nick Ogdon Chairman and CEO of Voice Commerce Group.
In his keynote to the TM Forum on Wednesday, Ogden expressed the view that the industry only had a short window of three and a half years left to seize the NFC opportunity.
“The smartphone is the ATM machine of the future,” said Ogden, but added that NFC had to be right first. Currently, 85% of payments are low value, he explained, but the industry had a huge opportunity on its doorstep to turn mobile payments into a real cash cow.
Revenue isn’t the only plus when it comes to mobile payments either. “Mobile payments reduce churn rate,” declared Ogden, citing the example of Safaricom, whose churn has remained flat since the launch of the M-PESA mobile money service in Kenya back in 2003.
Indeed, for Ogden, digital ATM machines should be available everywhere, even in the kitchen in place of a coffee machine, he joked. “Not to have to walk around with change in our pockets is such a great pleasure,” he told the audience.
The days when people would be able to “text me a tenner” were nearing by the day, said Ogden who also maintained that voice biometric authentication together with a SIM card would provide enough security for mobile payment authorization. After all, “everyone who owns a smartphone has a voice,” he added.
But Ogden also had some words of warning and caution for the telcos ready to dive head first into the new world of mobile money.
“When you look at mobile payments, banks are doing better than service providers. Why? Because they have no overarching brand,” he explained. Indeed, “fat pipes, did not know what they were until yesterday,” he said adding that true telco innovation would come from starting something and realizing it wasn’t right at all.
In other words, if at first mobile money services don’t work, try, try, try again.
