In 2012, Chris Dadd was hired for the Mobile Commerce Asia Summit. His role was to keynote, chair and run an innovation workshop plus write up the event in a report. You can read about the innovation workshop on his DADD.TV company site or by clicking the thumbnail to the right. The foreword and executive summary of the report is below. Please get in touch if you’d like to see the whole report for an idea of what can be produced for your events.

Foreword to Mobile Commerce Report by hosts NeoEdge

Standing at the dawn of the mobile commerce era, we are all searching for the best strategies, reconsidering what we really want, what is important and how the myriad of technology can help us. All over Asia, be it through feature phones or smart phones, mobile commerce initiatives are being planned and implementations are ongoing.

Mastery of commercial and technical knowledge needs to be in harmony. We are all at the tipping point. It is therefore an absolute pleasure for us to organize the 5th Mobile Commerce Summit Asia 2012. The insightful presentations, the delightful delegates and subsequently, the positive camaraderie culminate into an event for everyone. Here at Neoedge, our work always starts with value. We place paramount importance in maximizing value creation for everyone. This is the key consideration that led us to produce this report. The unique plethora of knowledge, key data and thought leadership created is so irresistible that we felt it has to be somehow capture‘’value’’ for you.

Together with the CEO of ZenithMist, Christopher Dadd, a well respected industry expert and writer, we have reviewed the presentation slides, listened to key points in the audio and carefully crafted the vast amount of knowledge into one unique comprehensive report. This report may act as your reference if you seek inspiration for best practices, your roadmap as you implement your next mobile payment platform, the ignition to kick start those brainstorming sessions, your guide as you are segmenting your customers or even as your blueprint if you are starting out your own mobile commerce venture! Whatever your needs are, we hope this report will make your Neoedge experience more complete.

Executive Summary

With many countries represented at the 5th Mobile Commerce Asia event in March 2012 and over 30 speakers covering all aspects of mobile money from the ecosystems up to the user experiences on the devices, a vast amount of experience was shared between leaders. A mobile phone changes lives, across borders. Money and airtimes reaches people in places where traditional channels couldn’t afford to reach: dispersing payroll, loans, and tickets and enabling bill payments, purchase of goods and loyalty rewards. Let’s consider the mobile market as a whole for a moment:
• In 2011 the mobile industry generated US$1.5 trillion in revenues and invested US$189 billion in capex.

• The mobile industry currently employs more than 8 million men and women, and contributes
US$617 billion to public funding.

• Mobile operators contribute pproximately 1.5% of the world’s GDP.

• 1.5 billion SIM‐based NFC handsets will be sold between 2010 and 2016, representing a cumulative transactions value of over $50 billion.

• According to the World Bank, a 10 per cent increase in Mobile penetration drives a 0.6 per cent increase in a developed country’s GDP, a 0.81 per cent increase a developing country’s GDP and in low to middle income countries, a 10% increase in Mobile Broadband penetration yields a 1.4 per cent increase in GDP. 1% of the worlds landmass will contain 90% of people by 2020 (up
from 75%). The remittance market opportunity is driving much of the excitement from banks and mobile operators. The World Bank forecasts that remittance flows to emerging markets will rise from US $325b to $404b in 2013. Of this total, Juniper Research and Berg Insight think $65b will be mobile in 2014 and by 2015 generating $6.2 in commissions.

As Frederic from BICS reminded us, the complexities of achieving this through an open ecosystem requires a carefully coordinated effort by money transfer operators, banks, regulators, send/receive payment service providers, cash‐in/out agents. Across borders there are no common minimum rules. Since MMT enables cash to flow around the world, regulators didn’t anticipate customizing the rules for Mobile Network Operators. The good news is that mobile operators went through a similar evolution from bilateral roaming agreements to today’s hub model and arguably banks did… within seven months of interoperability being allowed there was a 350% increase in messaging traffic ’’ (Ovum, 2011)

The mobile industry can learn from the introduction of SMS interoperability … too by joining schemes like VISA, Mastercard etc

The conference highlighted the need to build trusted, robust partnerships and tech. Regulatory compliance was repeated as both a benefit and a burden. More people transacting means a bigger interest from crime and therefore the need to watch for fictitious and terrorist names; security flaws in general. Limits for usage have to be enforced to reduce laundering risks, with strong KYC.