App/Software

Enoma Odia of Sofdia System Nigeria in Nigeria will develop a mobile banking service that incorporates a form of peer-to-peer banking known as Osusu to facilitate saving and borrowing money. Money transactions for the majority of poor people in Nigeria occur physically via thrift collectors traveling around to farmers and traders by bicycle. These people have no formal means to store cash or borrow money, and traditional banking via mobile phone has had limited uptake. They will develop an Osusu mobile money platform and train thrift collectors to recruit their customers to the program.

Francis Otim of MMINDZS LTD in Uganda will further develop their mobile accounting system that enables small- and medium-sized enterprise merchants to easily track and record money payments made through their mobile phones. The program also produces financial records, receipts and tax returns. Using a team of programmers they will develop their technology to produce an improved low-cost system with additional functions and full security, tailor-made for the African market.

Saqib Bashir of Monet (Pvt) Ltd. in Pakistan will promote the use of mobile money for financial transactions in Pakistan by developing an electronic commerce platform to connect a range of mobile phones, networks, and banks. This will provide individuals and merchants with more payment options including cards and mobile money. A low-cost point-of-sale application has been built and will be tested across a range of mobile devices, and the system will be integrated with various banks.

Jessica Vernon and Jennifer Stutsman of Maisha Meds in Kenya will encourage chemists and pharmacies to accept mobile money in East Africa by integrating their tailored software application with an established mobile payment system, and providing automatic registration and financial incentives. Chemists have found it particularly difficult to track transactions made using mobile money and therefore tend to avoid using it. Their existing software program can be run on locally available tablets and enables digital recording of pharmacy's sales and purchases, and stock tracking.

Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture Services Ltd. in the United Kingdom will provide the global poor, merchants and partner NGOs with easy access to digital currency for making and receiving payments or distributing aid, with no transaction costs using mobile phones. The digital currency can be exchanged for a local currency for a fee using a Gateway Broker, who can be any merchant, NGO or bank.

Harsh Shetty of Firefish Networks Pvt. Ltd. in India will provide a service - mLakshmi - for merchants using SMS to give credit to low-income customers and reduce their credit risk. Merchants and customers will register with the service and customers will receive regular SMS notifications of their credit balances, which they can use to pay for goods. They will promote uptake by rewarding merchants both for using the service and for recruiting customers, and the customers with good credit repayment histories will be eligible for more credit.

Punit Shah of OkHi in Kenya will build a platform to provide up-to-date information on financial access endpoints such as ATM locations by crowdsourcing data from smartphones from a network of users. Current tech-based data collection tools are not ideal as they are generally expensive, and the data quickly become outdated. They will build an app and run a 6-month pilot test by providing locked smart phones with limited functions to potential data collectors in Nairobi, one smaller city and one rural location.

Ernesto Damiani of Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates will develop a software toolkit to enable the secure purchase of goods by taking a photo with a simple mobile phone. The procedure only requires both purchaser and merchant to carry a simple phone and to visually identify themselves and details of the purchase, for example with a card, that can be captured in a single photograph. They will build software that uses visual cryptography to divide the photograph into two parts or shares, one sent to each phone.

Neil Patel of AwaazDe Infosystems Pvt Ltd in India will produce interactive podcasts that are sent by mobile phone to inform local users in India on relevant financial services and to collect their feedback on specific issues in audio form, making it more widely accessible. The feedback will be used to monitor financial habits, and help identify barriers to usage and ways to improve services. The interactive podcast platform can also be supplemented with optional features such as balance inquiries or loan repayment reminders.

Geraldine O'Keeffe of Software Group KE Ltd. in Kenya will develop a smartphone application so that smaller merchants in developing economies can use one system to receive mobile money from customers with different providers, and can digitally track sales and inventory. They will also explore options for subsidizing the technology including offering the generated data to financial service providers and others. Their approach will allow merchants to easily register online to encourage uptake, also reducing recruitment costs.