If mobile is the future, where are the telco’s?

Nice post. TELCOs completely lost it somewhere along the way: 

Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs

Thank you!  I have to admit, I don't understand how the TELCOs managed to squander such a head start over the banks and the FinTech start ups.

What has happened in Africa shows that TELCOs (at least VMNOs) have the ability, the skills and can make a living from micro-payments. I know regulation is often cited as an obstacle in the US & Europe, but that's not stopping the FinTech start-ups, so it's unclear why it would stop a TELCO.

MNOs lost it because "it can be quite frustrating to strike partnerships with MNOs." as I'd highlighted from my personal experience in my post. Africa is too broad a territory to credit MVNOs with success for. Apart from Kenya and one or two other countries, they've fumbled in most parts of the continent including South Africa. Personally, I'll believe that fintech has succeeded only when it hops off the VC gravy train, is forced to make revenues and profits and still manages to provide better CX than banks. IMO, that day is a long way off, especially when banking consumers - including me - are increasingly reporting that "financial institutions excel at leveraging digital technology to meet convenience and access needs of customers" (http://thefinancialbrand.com/52101/banking-consumer-service-expectation-study/).

I'd agree with the comment about partnerships.  The TELCO industry (in broad terms) isn't as developed as parts of the banking industry at partnering, creating shared service bureaus and other ways of chopping up the value chain. Compared to how banks handle all the actors in payments (processors, acquirers, networks, etc...) and do so at scale and volume across multiple entities, the mobile operators just haven't had that experience.

There is something about being the incumbent in any market, and perhaps particularly so in a trust-based business like banking. In East Africa, where banks had no foothold among the rural poor, Safaricom and other Telcos were the incumbents, and now banks are trying to break in. In developed economies, the reverse is true. Regulation is another challenge - banks are better equipped to deal with (and charge for) regulatory overhead such as KYC and AML monitoring requirements. 

Hi Graham, it's a very good point and one that's often dismissed by start-up culture. Incumbency in a regulated environment is a powerful position and it makes disruption difficult, although not impossible. Obviously if the regulator starts supporting new entrants (as now in the UK), then incumbency becomes less of an advantage. Still, it's noticable that in the UK the most successful non-bank entrant to financial services is Tesco Bank, which is backed by a retailer using retail principles (...but no branches).

Talking of how difficult it can be to strike partnerships with MNOs, this just in:

http://www.medianama.com/2015/06/223-google-play-vouchers/

With its decision to go offline, Google seems to be signaling that even it's having a problem dealing with MNOs and taming their greed. In this day and age when people are crying hoarse at banks for charging 1-2% interchange fees for card payments, MNOs are apparently still demanding 30% transaction fees for carrier billing.

Brilliant one from Ron Shevlin about fintech:

https://twitter.com/GTM360/status/611480316436447232

@rshevlin: 

Don't be a fool

Fintech won't rule

No doubt they're real cool

But they're just a bank's tool