[kictanet] CBK TO SPLIT MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICES FROM OPERATORS

[James Mbugua]

Listers,

The Business Daily is reporting that CBK will require telcos to open
independent subsidiaries to handle the cash remittance function complete
with a separate management structure and keeping separate books of account
for the payment service division.

Now this does not go as far as introducing the carrier neutral mobile money
service we need but maybed hand in hand with the new rules will be a
requirement to these services to "TALK" seamlessly with each other and with
other payments systems and banks the way different banks transact with one
another.

Secondly, I think it should be a wake up call to Safaricom to OPEN M-Pesa
to allow third parties to run away with new innovations with a standard API
or standard protocols for interfacing with the service without having to
require Safaricom's assessment of whether the service is viable or not or
even taking part in profit sharing.

As great a pioneering product Safaricom has brought, one thing is for sure,
the Brains at Safaricom House cannot match those of the thousands of IT
kids coming out of school daily and the logical thing is to let others now
come up with innovations that ride off M-PESA independently.

Otherwise, Kenya may be the global leader in Mobile money transfers, but if
we do not allow our kids to make the next great products by opening these
systems to them now, we will rue it later when the Paypal of mobile money
or the Ebay of mobile money is invented and popularized in another country
and we will hear of how Silicon Valley has produced yet another Billionaire
riding a product we could have come up with years before.

Regards

James

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/CBK-seeks-mobile-firm-subsidiaries/-/539552/2025700/-/14bgjuqz/-/index.html
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