Banking the unbanked using prepaid platforms and mobile telephones in the United States

The rapid growth of mobile phone usage and the continuous rise in wireless coverage fuel the expectations that access to financial services trough mobile phones could transform the way financial services are provided. The emergence of new and more efficient business models, can potentially resolve supply inefficiencies that explain the large unbanked population that exists in the USA, much larger than in most developed countries. Nearly 40 million US households (approximately 73 million people) are financially underserved (CFSI, 2007), of which 15 million households (approximately 28 million people) are totally unbanked. This problem is explained by the non adequacy of the value proposals offered by financial institutions to the demands of the US customers. The areas of poor alignment refer mostly to the design of products and the marketing and distribution networks used. To resolve these misalignments, this paper will argue that business models based on prepaid cards as products and mobile phones as transactional and distribution channels could be used in order to close the supply gap. We will call the business model proposed based on prepaid products and mobile phones mobile banking, since these two elements are the basis of the business model used companies such as Smart Money and G-Cash in the Phillipines, Wizzit in South Africa and M-Pesa in Kenya.prepaid platform; unbanked; financial services; mobile phones; prepaid cards;

Evaluating the transition of e-Government: A review of local authorities in England

The goal of e-Government is seen as a panacea for governmental authorities. The emerging needs of citizens, their inclusion and engagement in policy development, political and participatory processes have meant new perspectives on e-Government are required. This paper seeks to identify and evaluate the preparedness of 10 UK-based local authorities to transition from basic e-Government to a more sophisticated and integrated e-Government. A categorical assessment of e-Government characteristics is made and these authorities are ranked accordingly. Our findings reveal the majority of local authorities sampled had reached a high percentage of informational and transactional e-Government but few had reached the interactional level and none had achieved assimilation. This suggests that local authorities seem to have focused on basic e-Government services. There is a need now to forge ahead to integration and assimilation of e-Government in order to address the critical objectives of citizen inclusion and engagement, and alignment of institutional processes to provide an infrastructure for the transition to e-governance and e-knowledge

Past, present and future of mobile payments research: A literature review

The mobile payment services markets are currently under transition with a history of numerous tried and failed solutions, and a future of promising but yet uncertain possibilities with potential new technology innovations. At this point of the development, we take a look at the current state of the mobile payment services market from a literature review perspective. We review prior literature on mobile payments, analyze the various factors that impact mobile payment services markets, and suggest directions for future research in this still emerging field. To facilitate the analysis of literature, we propose a framework of four contingency and five competitive force factors, and organize the mobile payment research under the proposed framework. Consumer perspective of mobile payments as well as technical security and trust are best covered by contemporary research. The impacts of social and cultural factors on mobile payments, as well as comparisons between mobile and traditional payment services are entirely uninvestigated issues. Most of the factors outlined by the framework have been addressed by exploratory and early phase studies. </p

Building an alternative social currency: Dematerialising and rematerialising digital money across media

This paper reports on the user experience and design of physical and digital forms of a mixed-media local currency. We reconceive digitally mediated transactions as social interactions and report on the development of conceptual designs informed by user research and interactive workshops. Our findings show that use is strongly tied to conceptions of locality and community, markers of identity, information exchange and the digital and physical forms as tools for shaping interactions. The form of the currency can make the invisible visible, exposing our identities and values, business models, and the details of the transactions themselves. Our analysis stresses the need to provide opportunities for extending social interaction, making more local connections and deriving the best value from those connections, without insulating individuals from each other, or from the wider geographical context. Themes that emerged from the user research were visualized as conceptual designs for digitally augmented media, allowing us to explore the monetary transaction at three levels: the material, as interaction between two parties, and the context of the transaction.The RCUK Digital Economy theme (EP/K012304/1)

TELE-PAY A SUBSTITUTE OF CONVENTIONAL BANKING: A CONCEPTUAL STUDY

In modern era technology advancement make life easier and quicker. As adoption of technology becomes the essential part of every organization, same is happening in banking industry. Currently, technology acceptance is one of the core issue discussed in banks executive management meetings. The biggest challenge in the service industry is to provide the financial services to those who don’t have access to it. This study focuses to enhance the solution for delivering financial services as a tele-pay through integration rather than direct branch banking. Telecom and bank collaboration solve the problem of providing basic financial services to those who do not have access the services either due to their remoteness or inaccessibility. Tele-pay is considered as mobile payment services provided through telecom companies. Using Technology acceptance model (TAM) we have investigated four factors which are important for adoption of mobile payment by the customers i.e; trust, accessibility, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is widely used to analyze these factorsinfluence on adoption of mobile payment. Studies have considered compatibility, self efficacy and social influence affecting mobile payment adoption and trust, accessibility, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were found to be more relevant for customer acceptance. These indicators are used to investigate in the context of Pakistan to enhance mobile payment acceptance. The implication of this study for both telecom and banking industry is to further explore the ways for ease of adoption for mobile payment services among mass people

Electronic fraud detection in the U.S. Medicaid Healthcare Program: lessons learned from other industries

It is estimated that between $600 and$850 billion annually is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse in the US healthcare system,with $125 to$175 billion of this due to fraudulent activity (Kelley 2009). Medicaid, a state-run, federally-matchedgovernment program which accounts for roughly one-quarter of all healthcare expenses in the US, has been particularlysusceptible targets for fraud in recent years. With escalating overall healthcare costs, payers, especially government-runprograms, must seek savings throughout the system to maintain reasonable quality of care standards. As such, the need foreffective fraud detection and prevention is critical. Electronic fraud detection systems are widely used in the insurance,telecommunications, and financial sectors. What lessons can be learned from these efforts and applied to improve frauddetection in the Medicaid health care program? In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature study to analyze theapplicability of existing electronic fraud detection techniques in similar industries to the US Medicaid program

Financial Technologies: a Note on Mobile Payment

The financial market is currently disrupted by the rise of new technologies "FinTech” a short form for financial technology, which profoundly reshapes the financial intermediary structure and makes financial services more efficient. Mobile technology with Internet-enabled devices are the next logical phase of the World Wide Web campaign such as mobile phone taking over the mass market and will fundamentally change the way products are buy and sell as well as financial services especially the mobile payment system. This research examines changes payment method in financial services, particularly those involving mobile payments that can create new channels for consumers to purchase goods and services using mobile phone. Mobile payment application is ready to replace traditional cash, checks, credit and debit card throughout the country. In this stage of development, the current situation of mobile payment market, review the previous literature on mobile payment services, analysis use of mobile payment worldwide and various initiatives use mobile phones to offer financial services for those ‘unbanked\u27

Information Technology Platforms: Definition and Research Directions

The concept of an information technology (IT) related platform is broad and covers phenomena ranging from the operating system Linux to the Internet. Such platforms are of increasing importance to innovation and value creation across many facets of industry and daily life. There is, however, a lack of common understanding in both research and industry about what is mean by the term platform when related to IT. This lack of consensus is detrimental to research and knowledge development. Thus, the aims of this study are to: (i) provide a sound definition of the IT-platform concept by identifying its distinguishing dimensions; and (ii) identify important current research directions for the IT-platform concept. To achieve these aims a systematic literature review was undertaken with 133 relevant articles taken from major information systems journals, conferences, and business publications. The study contributes by providing a sound base for future research into IT-platforms.Comment: Research-in-progress ISBN# 978-0-646-95337-3 Presented at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2015 (arXiv:1605.01032

On the innovation mechanisms of fintech start-ups: insights from Swift's innotribe competition

The emergence of nascent forms of financial technology around the globe is driven by efforts to deconstruct and reimagine business models historically embedded within financial services. Entrepreneurial endeavors to this end are diverse. Indeed, the propensity towards complexity across the fintech landscape is considerable. Bridging as it does a diverse range of financial ser-vices, markets, innovations, industry participants, infrastructures and technologies. This study aims to improve the comprehension of the global fintech landscape. It is based on the analysis of start-ups who participated in SWIFT’s Innotribe competition over a three-year period. We used cluster analysis to group 402 fintech start-up firms, and then selected representative cases to create a foundational understanding of the structure of the fintech landscape. We found that six clusters capture the variety of firms and their activities. The main findings of this work are: (1) the development of fintech clusters to classify core services, business infrastructures and underlying component technologies, which characterize the fintech landscape; (2) an analysis of how fintechs synthesize different technologies to restructure and coordinate flows of financial information through competitive and cooperative mechanisms of disintermediation, extension of access, financialization, hybridization and personalization; (3) an analysis of related strate-gies for value creation connected with the competitive and cooperative mechanisms that were identified. Collectively, our results offer new insights into the diversity and range of emergent innovations and technologies which are transforming the financial services industry worldwide