Accelerating Mobile Money in Indonesia: South Sulawesi Mobile Money Business Plan

This paper provides a business plan to scale the use of mobile money as a vehicle to transform financial inclusion and achieve broad-based economic growth in South Sulawesi. It proposes several potential pilot activities for USAID Indonesia to accelerate the development, adoption, and usage of mobile money.

The paper provides an overview and context of Sulawesi and succinctly describes the predominant cocoa business scenario. It profiles the market segment, studies the financial and telecommunications infrastructure, and proposes a business hypothesis. It also performs a market analysis, describes the strategy and implementation for expansion of mobile money, and provides a financial analysis overview. Proposed ideas include:

• With cocoa payments as the catalyst, mobile money providers, both banks and mobile network operators, can invest in agent networks and other mobile money infrastructure. They can jointly work to develop a broad-based mobile money network;
• Discussions with cocoa farmers and collectors indicated these services to be of value in a mobile service which included, person-to-person transfer payment mechanism, bill payment, remittance product, and low-cost savings product;
• Overall strategy for expanding mobile money in South Sulawesi is to gain commitments from government, donor, and private-sector stakeholders.