scholarly journals Mobile Money for the Unbanked in Emerging Markets

Author(s):  
Jing Jin

Mobile money, together with mobile broadband, is likely to be the primary growth engine for emerging market mobile network carriers. The service is gaining popularity and is beginning to contribute considerably to telecom income. There are still 2 billion individuals worldwide who do not have a bank account. This group is primarily located in less developed areas (Africa, part of Asia, and Latin America). A typical use case of a distant worker sending money to the family for living expenses is highly expensive for persons who do not have financial inclusion. Mobile penetration is substantially higher, allowing for these remittances to be sent in a cost-effective and simple manner. Because the system is based on feature phones and 2G technology, end users do not need to have the most recent smartphone or mobile broadband (SMS or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data-USSD channel). The most common application is domestic remittance. Bill payments and merchant payments are two others. International remittances are now feasible across various operators as well (cross-MNO agreements). Globally, there were already more than 100 million active mobile money accounts in 2014, with services available in around 90 countries.

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zubaida Muhumed ◽  
Virginia Bodolica ◽  
Martin Spraggon

Subject area Family business. Study level/applicability Specialized undergraduate courses, Elective MBA courses. Case overview This case study uncovers the remarkable story of the relentless growth and sporadic weakening of Nurul Ain (NA) Limited, a family business conglomerate with major operations in the Eastern region of Africa. The case provides an opportunity to follow the different stages of development of this family-owned organization through a sequence of strategic events and family dynamics that led to its recurrent success, decline and rejuvenation. Despite the numerous successes of NA Limited since its establishment in the early 1990s, the ambiguous relationship between family, ownership and management systems has caused a ripple effect of strategic, structural and governance challenges that threaten the sustainability of the family business. Nowadays, the founder faces the pressing challenge of ensuring his legacy remains intact and is passed over to his chosen successor, who, in turn, is confronted with the dilemma of joining the family business or pursing an independent career outside NA Limited. Shedding light on the complexity of today’s family-run organizations, the case allows examining the effectiveness of strategic decision-making in an emerging market context by applying a variety of family business principles, theories and frameworks. Expected learning outcomes Discuss the sources of competitive advantage and the typical challenges that family firms face in the context of emerging markets. Perform a comprehensive corporate diagnosis and examine the specificities of strategic management process in family businesses. Assess the succession management practices in family-run organizations and design a profile of successful successor. Discuss the effectiveness of various corporate governance mechanisms in the context of family-owned enterprises. Evaluate the strategic choices of the top management team and offer recommendations for securing the family business longevity. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill V. Hagey ◽  
Maia Laabs ◽  
Elizabeth A. Maga ◽  
Edward J. DePeters

AbstractThe rumen is a complex ecosystem that plays a critical role in our efforts to improve feed efficiency of cattle and reduce their environmental impacts. Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene provides a powerful tool to survey shifts in the microbial community in response to feed additives and dietary changes. Oral stomach tubing a cow for a rumen sample is a rapid, cost-effective alternative to rumen cannulation for acquiring rumen samples. In this study, we determined how sampling method, as well as type of sample collected (liquid vs solid), bias the microbial populations observed. The abundance of major archaeal populations was not different at the family level in samples acquired via rumen cannula or stomach tube. Liquid samples were enriched for the order WCHB1-41 (phylum Kiritimatiellaeota) as well as the family Prevotellaceae and had significantly lower abundance of Lachnospiraceae compared with grab samples from the rumen cannula. Solid samples most closely resembled the grab samples; therefore, inclusion of particulate matter is important for an accurate representation of the rumen microbes. Stomach tube samples were the most variable and were most representative of the liquid phase. In comparison with a grab sample, stomach tube samples had significantly lower abundance of Lachnospiraceae, Fibrobacter and Treponema. Fecal samples did not reflect the community composition of the rumen, as fecal samples had significantly higher relative abundance of Ruminococcaceae and significantly lower relative abundance of Lachnospiraceae compared with samples from the rumen.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Rosa María Huerta Mata

The article’s objective is to analyze the economic agency acquired by university students through the international remittances support network. During September and October 2019, five indepth interviews were conducted with female law students from the Actopan Higher School of the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo. Young women’s households receive remittances whose function is to help them economically, a network built through the family connection with their maternal uncles. The student’s mothers are sorors which allows young women to obtain economic agency. This analysis contributes to the knowledge about one of the effects of remittances on households in the Mezquital Valley, Mexico. The results of the study only focus on one region of the country.


Author(s):  
Omar Subhi Aldabbas

Internet of Things (IoT) is a ubiquitous embedded ecosystem known for its capability to perform common application functions through coordinating resources, which are distributed on-object or on-network domains. As new applications evolve, the challenge is in the analysis and usage of multimodal data streamed by diverse kinds of sensors. This paper presents a new service-centric approach for data collection and retrieval. This approach considers objects as highly decentralized, composite and cost effective services. Such services can be constructed from objects located within close geographical proximity to retrieve spatio-temporal events from the gathered sensor data. To achieve this, we advocate Coordination languages and models to fuse multimodal, heterogeneous services through interfacing with every service to achieve the network objective according to the data they gather and analyze. In this paper we give an application scenario that illustrates the implementation of the coordination models to provision successful collaboration among IoT objects to retrieve information. The proposed solution reduced the communication delay before service composition by up to 43% and improved the target detection accuracy by up to 70%, while maintaining energy consumption 20% lower than its best rivals in the literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 1215-1237
Author(s):  
George Okello Candiya Bongomin ◽  
Joseph Ntayi

Purpose Recently, a large body of research has been devoted on the role of trust in shaping different types of transactions, especially in rural financial development. Trust is a set of expectations shared by all those who engage in an exchange. Indeed, the “rule of the game” suggests that no trusting party in a transaction should act opportunistically. Consequently, this study aims to establish the mediating effect of trust in the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion of MSMEs in developing countries with a specific focus on rural Uganda. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative survey-based study was used and responses obtained from 379 MSMEs located in northern Uganda were analysed using partial least square-PLS version 3.0. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed from scales and items used in previous studies referenced in internationally recognised journals to elicit responses from the MSMEs. Structural equation modelling was used to test the models to arrive at a final empirical model derived from the data. Findings The authors found evidence that trust enhances mobile money adoption and usage to increase the scope of financial inclusion of MSMEs in developing countries. Moreover, when individual effect was determined, trust also had significant and positive effect on financial inclusion. Thus, the study results imply that trust enhances mobile money adoption and usage to improve the level of financial inclusion of MSMEs in developing countries. Research limitations/implications The study used cross-sectional data to document the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion and to establish the mediating effect of trust in the relationship. Future research could use relevant longitudinal data to verify other benefits of trust. Practical implications The results present trust as a significant factor for FINTECH financial services marketing and growth. Specifically, data privacy and effectiveness of the mobile telephone network is more likely to help consumers to bridge the gap between participation and non-participation on the mobile money platform. Customers’ data sent over the mobile network of providers should be protected from unnecessary access and usage by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) staff and unauthorised persons and agents. Data protection protocols should be set by the MNOs to avoid unnecessary access and use of customers’ data. Originality/value Globally, Fintech scholars have examined the role of mobile money in promoting financial inclusion. However, there is insufficient evidence on the mediating effect of trust in the relationship between mobile money adoption and usage and financial inclusion, especially among rural MSMEs. This study invents a novel direction on the importance of trust in creating transaction efficiency by eliminating opportunism and fraud with in the Fintech ecosystem.


1989 ◽  
Vol 154 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Leff ◽  
Ruth Berkowitz ◽  
Naomi Shavit ◽  
Angus Strachan ◽  
Ilana Glass ◽  
...  

Schizophrenic patients living in high contact with relatives having high expressed emotion (EE) were recruited for a trial of social interventions. The patients were maintained on neuroleptic medication, while their families were randomly assigned to education plus family therapy or education plus a relatives group. Eleven out of 12 families accepted family therapy in the home, whereas only six out of 11 families were compliant with the relatives group. Non-compliance was associated with a poorer outcome for the patients in terms of the relapse rate. The relapse rate over nine months in the family therapy stream was 8%, while that in compliant families in the relatives group stream was 17%. Patients' social functioning showed small, non-significant, gains. The data from the current trial were compared with data from a previous trial. The lowering of the relapse rate in schizophrenia appears to be mediated by reductions in relatives' EE and/or face-to-face contact, and is not explained by better compliance with medication. Reduction in EE and/or contact was associated with a minuscule relapse rate (5%). Very little change occurred in families who were non-compliant with the relatives group. On the basis of these findings, we recommend that the most cost-effective procedure is to establish relatives groups in conjunction with family education and one or more initial family therapy sessions in the home. It is particularly important to offer home visits to families who are unable to or refuse to attend the relatives groups.


Author(s):  
Yan Dong ◽  
Sining Song ◽  
Sriram Venkataraman ◽  
Yuliang Yao

Mobile money is a service bundled with mobile technology and a social good that promotes financial inclusion for the under-served populations. Although the effect of mobile money has been examined in the past, we look at the supply side effects as it is important for managers to understand the role of mobile money in both providing social good and making a profit. From 1G to 4G mobile technologies, mobile money consistently serves as a competitive advantage for mobile network operators (MNOs). However, this does not mean that the effect stays unchanged over the generations of mobile technology. Instead, when the 3G technology allows web browsing as a major upgrade of mobile functionality, MNOs with mobile money have a substantially larger set of options to differentiate from those without mobile money; and as a result, mobile money implemented with 3G and 4G leads to larger market shares than that with 1G and 2G.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuping Peng ◽  
Jose Oscar Fajardo ◽  
Pouria Sayyad Khodashenas ◽  
Begoña Blanco ◽  
Fidel Liberal ◽  
...  

5G envisages a “hyperconnected society” where trillions of diverse entities could communicate with each other anywhere and at any time, some of which will demand extremely challenging performance requirements such as submillisecond low latency. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) concept where application computing resources are deployed at the edge of the mobile network in proximity of an end user is a promising solution to improve quality of online experience. To make MEC more flexible and cost-effective Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies are widely adopted. It leads to significant CAPEX and OPEX reduction with the help of a joint radio-cloud management and orchestration logic. In this paper we discuss and develop a reference architecture for the orchestration and management of the MEC ecosystem. Along with the lifecycle management flows of MEC services, indicating the interactions among the functional modules inside the Orchestrator and with external elements, QoS management with a focus on the channel state information technique is presented.


2014 ◽  
Vol 543-547 ◽  
pp. 3100-3104
Author(s):  
Xin Huang ◽  
Yu Xing Peng ◽  
Peng Fei You

The massive data in Data centers network will be frequently accessed massive datasets for cloud services, which will lead to some new requirements and becomes an important issue for interconnection topology and data management in cloud computing. According to the cost-effective, the paper proposes a new interconnection network MyHeawood for cloud computing. MyHeawood is constructed by small switches and servers with dual-port NIC according to recursive method. The data placement strategy in MyHeawood is a hashing algorithm based on the family of hash functions. MyHeawood uses three replicas strategy base on master copy, which is allocated in different sub layer to improve the reliability of data.


Author(s):  
Francis Agbenyegah Kwadzo ◽  
Regina Kafui Adroe ◽  
Dr. Michael Asante

Mobile payment is an electronic payment made through a mobile device. As the number of mobile phone subscribers in Ghana increases, so does the market for mobile money services. The majority of Ghanaians lack any formal bank account. An estimated 80 percent of Ghanaians are “unbanked” – meaning they conduct their transactions outside the banking sector with no access to financial services. Products like “mobile money,” that enable safe and secure money transfers without the use of a bank account, could have a major impact on this unserved segment of the population. Mobile money gives anyone with a mobile phone the ability to transfer money, make cash payments and conduct other financial transactions over the phone. Currently, there are four mobile money payment systems in Ghana, namely, MTN mobile money, Vodafone (VF) cash, Tigo cash and Airtel money. For an effective operation of these systems, Privacy, Traceability, Cost of Transaction, and Simplicity of the Processes involved are of much interest. The study examined the loopholes in the current mobile payment systems and proposed a framework to address the loopholes such as: Entering of information on next of kin into the system during registration, acceptance of year of birth as PIN, transactional PIN decrypted, no entering of a Valid ID number into the system, no provision for security word during token cash out, no provision for guarantor information, no provision for BoG permit number, no provision for police clearance number, and data in transit not encrypted. Keywords: Transactions, mobile money, traceability


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