Category Archives: Digital Money

Transitioning from social to e-commerce: not everyone makes it across

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In a world where scale matters and players must continually reinvent themselves, it saddens us to see that not all make it through the metamorphosis.

Multiply Marketplace was a social networking service that first started in 2004 and built  a 11-million strong community around blogging, photo sharing, videos and more.

In 2012 they moved their base from Florida, USA to Indonesia. The task at hand was to offer e-commerce services to the 350 million strong market in Philippines and Indonesia, while also discontinuing their blog services.

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What impact will Digital Money have on employment?

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The chief executive of Barclays, suggested during investor meetings that Barclays aims to become a self-oriented company, allowing staff to focus on added value. Antony Jenkins envisages a future in which the bank employs as few as 100,000 people (current strength ~140,000).  

While this is being positioned as blue-sky thinking rather than a statement of potential job cuts, it got me thinking about how the advent of Digital Money is likely to impact what is closest to our hearts at Shift Thought, namely the creation of jobs world-wide.

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The case of Liberty Reserve – Identifying “The weakest link” in Digital Money Services

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The news on the shutdown of Liberty Reserve money transfer raises concerns for the potential knock on impact on legitimate users – of that service, and of new ones like it, that are springing up around the world. What then is the most effective way in which this kind of use of digital money can be segregated from the daily transformative use of Digital Money as a tool for financial inclusion?

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Branchless Banking Pakistan versus Mobile Financial Services Bangladesh

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In two previous blogs I discussed how branchless banking(BB) has taken off in Pakistan, and the way that the mobile and banking industries in Bangladesh are coming together to launch mobile financial services (MFS). This brings us to the logical question – how do they compare against each other? How is BB Pakistani style different to MFS a la Bangladesh? Which is likely to take off faster, and how are the people in each of the countries likely to benefit from the services?

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Mobile Financial Services take off in Bangladesh

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Will Bangladesh, a pioneer of microfinance, be able to make a success of mobile financial services?

As part of their vision of Digital Bangladesh, they are engaged in rolling out services to the unbanked segment. This is part of a larger move towards Digital Money, with the Digital Money SAGE registering over 33 Digital Money initiatives, from over 46 players across a wide range of industries. Interestingly, these are not just local players. In September last year PayPal entered the country, on the initiative of freelancers who wanted a way to accept payments from people around the world.

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Mobile Money in Malaysia

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At the confluence of multiple markets, Malaysia is the “Turkey of the East”.

As it is both a Sender and Receiver of remittances payment providers from multiple industries find it a perfect testing ground for innovative new services.
With enabling regulations having been in place for some time, I thought I should discuss why it is that traction has not been greater.  And is this a hiccup, an initial inertia, possibly the calm before the storm? Is the tipping point going to come, although later than expected, and if so, is 2013 going to be the year?

Whether or not consumers will adopt is an outcome determined by a complex set of circumstances. Explore the Malaysia profile on our SAGE site and let me know what you think.  We have an interesting free whitepaper on Mobile Money in Malaysia here. Over the next few months I shall share my thoughts, considering the determinants, the survey results and more, so we can together get a better sense of what is likely to happen.