Interesting Snippets

doctors in Tanzania using M-Pesa’s banking service to send bus fare …

Doctors at the Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania clinic (CCBRT) say the average cost of a return bus ticket for a woman traveling from a rural area for treatment is $60, a huge amount in a country where the majority of people live on $2 a day.

“We use the mobile phone to actually transfer those transport grants to the communities, so that those women can reach our facility…

A survey commissioned by UK supermarket Tesco has found that one in ten Brits will complete their Christmas shopping using their mobile phones this year… Tesco’s study found that nearly half of (the 4000 people) polled would shop online using their phones whilst watching TV, one in six would look to buy something on their bus journey and around a quarter will search online using their mobiles whilst journeying to or from work.

Girlswalker is a teen youth girls fashion magazine, on mobile phones. Its premise - they follow and report on what the coolest Tokyo teen girls are doing and wearing… … this mobile magazine took off with a bang. They became so popular, that now they run twice yearly fashion shows in huge venues… they sell fashion items in real time, as the girl walks on the catwalk, you just point your cameraphone at the model, and take a picture, and then buy the fashion item on the spot, in your size and to your colors etc.. … Alan told Oxford University that the redemption rates of the advertisements on Girlswalker, are averaging…. (drumroll)…. 45% !!!!

In May, Dorsey told us that of the roughly 30 million US merchants who make less than $100,000 per year, of this group only 6 million are currently processing credit cards. The remainder, or 24 million businesses, are all potential Square customers who are looking for a low-cost and simple way to process credit cards.

In 2015, shoppers around the world are expected to spend about $119 billion on goods and services purchased via mobile phones. That number represents about 8% of the total e-commerce market. “Mobile online shopping is reaching critical mass,” says senior analyst Mark Beccue. “In the United States, mobile online shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. While definitions of ‘mass market adoption’ vary, a more than threefold increase in one year indicates significant consumer interest.” Noteworthy is that even that $1+ billion turnover in the US is dwarfed by the size of the mobile online shopping market in Japan, which exceeded $10 billion in 2009 alone.

The basic idea of M-PESA is that the 100,000 small retailers in Kenya who already sell mobile-phone airtime, in the form of scratch cards, can also register to be mobile-money agents, taking in and paying out cash. More than 17,600 retailers have signed up as M-PESA agents—far outnumbering Kenya’s 840 bank branches.