Brett King’s recent article on ‘Banking’s new playground’ raises some interesting points as to ‘how Africa will show the way’.
Smart phone penetration in Africa is currently less than 15% and
projected to be an estimated 40% by 2017. This means that mobile banking and payments service providers will have to service both Smart phones and Feature phones for the foreseeable future in order to maintain their target deployment levels.
This presents significant challenges for the service providers in the provisioning of appropriate security, which will be essential in engendering trust and a competitive advantage in winning/retaining market share for those that get it right.
Sadly, virtually all types of traditional security go out the window in this new emerging and fledgling mobile payments landscape. Whilst functionality, speed and efficiency will be the front line of the battle, the winners and losers on the battle field
will be determined by trust and loyalty. Provisioning security that is intuitive, low/no friction and for the most part, invisible, is the key to being successful and creating true competitive advantage in the African market.