Mobile money is among the fastest growing
technologies in East Africa, the technology has proven itself to be a life
saver and a game changer to the local financial institutions and business
sectors. Few years back it was a normal thing to witness people queued up in
long lines waiting either to send money in some accounts in the bank or receive
money. The emerging of Mobile banking has been a great step forward in the
enhancement of financial transaction systems of Tanzania and Africa in general.
Mobile money is paved the way for
Mobile Banking with Vodacom working with both CRDB and NMB to provide the
m-banking services to their customers this implies the game is on for more
mobile service providers to works with local banks to provide the services to
the local communities. With the case study done by Vodacom M-PESA in 2010 In
Tanzania 54% of people didn’t use any form of financial service; formal, semi-formal
or informal prior to the launch of M-PESA while only 9% of the population had
access to formal financial services. In
2011 the governor of Bank of Tanzania (BOT) Mr. Benno Ndulu told The Citizen
the daily local newspaper that “The mobile phone banking facilitates the flow
of financial services to unbanked customers mainly in rural areas. And they
access banking services at low charges”
This is the period when we say everything goes online wither its money or media. The East Africa mobile industry giants like Vodacom, Airtel, MTN, Tigo, Safaricom and others have implemented the technology as part of their services which they provide to their customers. The number of mobile phone users in Tanzania is expected to hit 36 million by 2015. This means that mobile payment and transactions at some point of time will be among the most influential ways of doing business and conducting financial transactions.
“I have
a chance to double the original amount I invested in the beginning of the day
as the daily profit in my business for both M-PESA and Tigo PESA” the local entrepreneur
said. PESA means money in Swahili official translation of the term. M-PESA and
Tigo PESA are among the mobile transactions services provided by Vodacom and
Tigo respectively in Tanzania. The users of the technology enjoy the benefit of
the technology and most of them agree the technology is efficiency, time saving
and more secure. They no longer have to travel with a lot amount of money in
their pockets, this reduces the risk of them being robbed also they claim that
the technology reduces the complication they were facing in the banks having to
line up in long queues. The condition that you must have a bank account before
sending or receiving money was among the other things they didn’t like to face.
Mobile
payment is a game changer now people can contribute for the weddings, sending
school fees to their kids, paying their T.V bills and electric bills, spiritual
contributions and so many other things can be done through the use of digitized
money transactions.
The
lack of knowledge and security in the digital transaction of money has been the
major setback in the growth of the technology. People has been withdrawn from
the technology with the fear of getting cheated and tricked into releasing
their accounts or transfer their banks deposit to the wrong people. For
services like performing balance check and other banking transactions which does
not involve transferring of money has been utilized more than services which
involve major cash transfers through accounts or payments in some businesses.
The
local mobile phone companies have been reluctant to explain the issues of
security to their customers and most of the time the banks and mobile companies
have the perception that the responsibility of informing the community about
these problems associated with digital money transferred belongs to the other
body.
While
the technology is booming and new innovation and ideas are coming out every day
the authorities should focus more in creating awareness to the local people on
safety procedures on the ways of doing their final transaction using digitized
system wither is mobile phones, PDAs and so on. Recently have been reports in
crimes involving people stealing money from locals and banks using their mobile
phones working together with corrupted people in these institutions to reach
their goal of tricking the customers into the trap of thieves. The only problem
that remains in our hands now is the issue of security and how to create
awareness among the users of the technology.