Re: Suggest all WPIG have text on: Goal to advance economic/financial inclusion for unbanked/underbanked

Hi Adrian

Thank you for launching the discussion. I think it is a very important 
one to have.
I cannot agree more about the sentence "financial inclusion of the 
unbanked and underbanked" is all marketing and usually looking very 
suspicious.
I believe that the term "financial inclusion" needs to be deconstructed, 
and detailed issues have to be identified. It is very hard to discuss at 
that level of abstraction, without identifying current issues that needs 
to be addressed.
I personally doubt that identity is the core problem. It would be surely 
the case if the future of financial services in developing countries 
would follow a similar model as in western countries. I don't think it 
is the case, and the explosion of mobile money is another evidences that 
financial services would not follow the same path. I think that indeed 
the future is on mobile money, but there are today many challenges that 
prevent the full exploitation of the platform.
As of now, mobile money is just a mean to transfer money from A to B as 
Joerg mentioned. But this is not financial services this is money 
transfer. How mobile money could be transformed in financial services is 
the key question, that is currently explored by many actors. As of 
today, in most countries for most oeprators, mobile money is jsut mobile 
transfer, with all accounts almost all the time empty.
There are imho lots of issues, some might be related to this group, some 
are clearly not:
*accessibility: how to make mobile services accessible for people who 
are illiterate
*Financially literacy: how to make people aware of financial services 
and what are benefits etc.
*interoperability: as of today, mobile money services are not 
interoperable: users can exchange money with other users on the same 
system (operators), and usually in the same country
*Ecosystem: There is not real ecosystem today for mobile money. Users 
can pay only a very limited set of services, they can pay at shops 
(sometimes) but this is a burden for merchants because there is no 
receipts, not connection with accounting software etc.
*connection with the web/ict services : it is very difficult today (and 
almost inexistent) to connect mobile money to web sites or mobile services
in few words, mobile money has the potential to become a payment 
instrument, but the journey is still full of challenges. On the other 
hand, the lack of traditional payment instruments (credit card) is also 
a great opportunities for developing countries to leapfrog a generation 
of payment technologies (credit card and related elements) and directly 
develop their electronic payment ecosystem based on new 
web-based/mobile-based approach.
I see few opportunities/options for WPIG to pick some specific items to 
address (interoperability, ecosystem, etc.) but the major challenge is 
imho the absence of the key players. During the workshop in Paris in 
2014, Comviva, one of the biggest mobile money platform provider, made a 
presentation, but they didn't join, mostly because there was no real 
activity on the topic. In the same way, there is no mobile money 
providers (i mean they are companies in the group like some mobile 
operators who are offering mobile money services, put nobody from these 
departments are onboard) in the group. It is imho a kind of chicken and 
eggs issue: till there is a clear roadmap related to the topic, the big 
players would not be onboard, and at the same time, it is hard to have a 
clear roadmap without big players on board.

Steph


Le 27/07/2015 11:15, Adrian Hope-Bailie a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> This may not be a popular response but I thought someone needed to play
> devil's advocate (please note that this is my personal view, although
> that should go without saying).
>
> I would love our vision to include a utopian world where we solve world
> hunger and end all wars but we need to be cognizant of what is practical
> for our group to genuinely influence. It's a personal bugbear of mine
> how often companies or groups place themselves under the banner of
> "improving financial inclusion" when they have no practical plan to do
> anything but wring their hands and talk about the problem.
>
> The "financial inclusion of the unbanked and underbanked" is a
> fantastically exploited phrase that everybody loves to bandy about as
> something they are trying desperately to solve and I don't want us to be
> one of those unless we have some real plans to make a difference. How
> will financial inclusion be addressed using the Web and specifically how
> will new Web standards be a part of that solution?
>
> The reality is that the majority of the unbanked and underbanked are in
> the situation they are in because of issues of identity. The developed
> world has decided that you may not have access to banking services if
> you can't prove who you are and the less developed world must now play
> by those same rules, no matter how practical it is to do so.
>
> The traditional banking system is unable to viably support the bottom
> tier of customers because the onboarding cost of an individual by a
> traditional bank (KYC etc) will never be recovered, assuming the
> potential customer even has the necessary documents or proof to follow a
> traditional KYC process. Banks are not charities so offering financial
> services to this tier of customer is simply never going to come from the
> traditional banking industry. There are almost weekly news releases
> about how crypto-currencies will swoop in and resolve this but I'm yet
> to see a practical example of how this will be achieved. I suggest that
> you challenge anyone that tells you they are trying to address the
> problem of the unbanked with the question: "How?". It's easy to say that
> it's important, organisations like CGAP have proven it's value beyond
> doubt, but it's a lot harder to implement solutions.
>
> At the F2F in NYC it was clear that identity is something the group is
> not keen to try and take on right now. We all see it as important but
> not important enough to be in scope for our first WG. So that leaves me
> wondering, how do we plan on impacting financial inclusion through the
> narrow scope of our current WG charter? I assume we agree that we are
> not so then I propose it is not mentioned in that charter at all.
>
> In terms of the IG's vision, I'm on the fence. I see indirect benefits
> that our work, specifically the Internet of Value CG and Credentials CG
> work, will have for financial inclusion eventually but the resounding
> apathy with which our group dealt with the Credentials CG's attempts to
> charter a WG suggests to me that the IG claiming it genuinely wants to
> contribute to improving financial inclusion is a stretch.
>
> As Manu correctly points out there are organisations like the Gates
> Foundation that are tackling this issue head on but they are doing so
> using simple solutions based on mobile phones and text messages.
> Technology will certainly play a major role in solving these problems
> over the coming years but the role of "the Web" is unlikely to be a
> major one for some time and so I am struggling to see where the W3C, and
> this IG, fits in today.
>
> I wholeheartedly support any initiative that will improve financial
> inclusion (it has been a passion of mine for many years) and if it's
> something people in this group truly believe we can influence then I'm
> eager to hear how and make it a part of our vision.
>
> Otherwise, I'm afraid we are at risk of being another group adding to
> the noise but with no practical solutions to put forward and that does
> more harm than good because it distracts attention away from groups like
> the Gates Foundation that are elbows deep in actually solving the problem.
>
> Hoping to be wrong (and climbing off my soapbox),
> Adrian
>
>
> On 27 July 2015 at 04:27, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com
> <mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 07/26/2015 02:03 PM, Louise Bennett wrote:
>     > One of the major themes of this year's UN IGF is connecting the next
>     > billion. I have been inputting to the inter sessional work on this
>     > and have described the W3C payments initiative. The draft inputs are
>     > now on the web site. Manu are you planning to do anything at the next
>     > IGF?
>
>     Unfortunately, I'm spread a bit too thin between the Web Payments and
>     Credentials stuff in the technical standardization initiatives and won't
>     be able to participate in this years UN Internet Governance Forum.
>
>     Look out for Pindar Wong and Primavera De Filippi, as I think they
>     intend to do something related around blockchain at IGF.
>
>     You may also want to link up with James Dailey at the Gates Foundation
>     and their work on financial services for the poor.
>
>     I've cc'ed each of these people, please link up offline if you can.
>
>     > Do you want me to push this work as a sub-theme?
>
>     Yes, please, and let us know if this group (or the Credentials Community
>     Group) can help in any way.
>
>     -- manu
>
>     --
>     Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
>     Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>     blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
>     https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/
>
>
>

-- 
Stephane Boyera    stephane@sbc4d.com
@stephb4d
CEO                +33 (0)6 73 84 87 27
SB Consulting      http://www.sbc4d.com
Personal Tech Blog http://stephb.org

Received on Monday, 27 July 2015 10:49:24 UTC