Mobile Financial Services at the Base of the Pyramid

Mohamad, Mostafa, Wood-Harper, Trevor and Ramlogan, Ronnie (2014) Mobile Financial Services at the Base of the Pyramid. In: Organizational Innovation and IT Governance in Emerging Economies. IGI Global, Hershey, pp. 46-82. ISBN 9781466673328, 9781466673335

Text Mobile Financial Services at the Base of the Pyramid.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Mobile financial services is one of the uprising movements to bank the unbanked by integrating philanthropic and business approaches for financial inclusion. In this chapter, the authors address how a systemic view helps integrate the Philanthropic Initiatives (PI) and the Commercial Initiatives (CI) to get a sustainable impact on the unbanked micro-entrepreneurs. However, each approach has pros and cons as they go along the stages of design, deployment, and sustainability. Using the soft system thinking, the authors theorise the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) as a business system to mix-up the relatively high start-up capabilities of the PI with the relatively sustainable impact of CI. The mobile money case shows that donors, local private enterprises, and multinational corporations follow the BoP strategy to develop an online grid that offers a reconciled balanced scorecard for economic returns, social benefits, and local impact. Such a strategy guarantees flexible, long-term investments and facilitates developing innovative financial services.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads