Expanding the Ecosystem of Mobile Money: Considerations for Interoperability

This note examines interoperability in mobile money services and outlines opportunities for better-connected mobile money platforms. It defines interoperability in broad terms as the interconnection of mobile money services with external parties with the aim to create value for customers and commercial players. The note serves to promote discussion within the industry about how to evaluate and realize opportunities for interoperability. Interoperability is increasingly cited as a solution to increase transaction volumes and extend the range of financial products offered through the mobile phone. Current state of the market is an important consideration to successfully implement interoperability. Key points include:

• Benefits and objectives of implementing interoperability must be established before deciding which assets should be interconnected in a market;
• Most mobile money deployments are busy building the foundation of their services and cannot invest in connections to external parties;
• Number of external connections and partnerships can be expected to increase through market forces as deployments mature;
• Maturity of mobile money deployments within a market need to be carefully considered in any discussion of mandated interoperability.