Market Overview: How Bank4YOU Group’s Solution Will Revolutionize Existing Mobile Money Remittance Market

Nowadays, people can hardly imagine their everyday lives without mobile money transfers or remittances. Usually, mobile money services help to perform electronic money transactions over a mobile device. Mobile financial services industry is booming. Mobile wallets and mobile payments become buzzwords, as everyone needs fast transactions at breathtaking speeds. Withdrawal of funds in local currency (cash out) via the mobile money service or mobile airtime has never been so easy. Bank4YOU Group is currently developing a MMRS application, based on blockchain, that will help to improve a peer-to-peer (P2P) money transactions across international borders.

As an innovative consortium, acting as solution provider operating in the dynamic mobile payments sector, Bank4YOU Group aims to integrate crypto currency convergence with the convenience of mobile money solutions. The company has also created its own crypto currency, the ‘MMR’ token, which underpins its Blockchain system for mobile money transfers. Remittances will be executed via mutual agreements between customers and partners regardless of their respective locations.

The main component of the MMRS is a system of tokens tied to local currencies of user’s countries, which enables fast, reliable and cheap remittance of values across countries and continents.

According to a McKinsey Global Institute report by 2020, the global payments industry would have generated, as a result of an average percent growth rate, an estimated $2.2 trillion in revenue, which would be over $400 billion more than in 2015 ($1.8 trillion). Just imagine, one in three remittances are sent from Africa! Every seventh citizen of African countries (120 million) is a recipient of remittances from friends and family abroad. The total amount is staggering $60 billion, which makes as much as a third of total GDP in some African markets! Besides, 46 per cent of subscribers in India and 45 per cent in China prefer using their mobile money wallets at bars, restaurants and retail shops.

Crypto currencies (mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum) nowadays represent an active ecosystem for transactions, just like an existing banking system. The solution based on convergence of crypto currencies and mobile network operator’s balances is estimated to show the same growth as from mobile accounts and bank accounts — 120% per year.

There are several projects that are implementing mobile money remittance systems:

MTN Group. Launched in 1994, connecting subscribers in 22 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. As of 30 June 2013, MTN recorded 201.5 million subscribers across its operations in Afghanistan, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Republic, Iran, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville), Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zambia. MTN’s shares constitute the biggest primary listing on the JSE — Africa’s largest stock exchange.

MTN Mobile Money has partnership with 10 partner banks. One can use MTN Mobile Money to send and receive money, top-up MTN airtime, pay bills (DStv, ECG Postpaid, MTN Postpaid, School fees and more), buy & pay for insurance, pay employee salaries, pay for airline tickets and other goods and services.

Vodafone’s M-Pesa mobile money transfer and payment service. Mother company huge network gave it access to 19.9 million active users across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Across the M-Pesa footprint, there are over 273,000 active agents and M-Pesa processed 3.4 bln transactions in the year April 2014 — April 2015. M-Pesa was first launched in Kenya in 2007.

WorldRemit is an online service that lets people send money to friends and family living abroad, using a computer, smartphone or tablet. Money can be received as a bank deposit, cash pick-up, Mobile Money, or mobile airtime top-up. WorldRemit’s service is available to senders in 50 countries. It offers transfers to more than 140+ destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas. In 2014 it was announced that WorldRemit had received the backing of Accel Partners, one of the world’s most high-profile investment companies, and an early funder of Facebook, Dropbox and Spotify. Accel invested $40 million, one of the largest ever Series A funding rounds in Europe.

MoneyOnMobile is India’s largest mobile payments. MoneyOnMobile is authorized by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to set up semi closed payment system in India which enables registered users to buy goods, products and services from registered Merchants.

Transferring and using mobile airtime as a payment method is an evident everyday need in countries with growing economies or poorly developed banking systems. On the other hand, crypto currencies and blockchain technology have been previously out of reach for a vast number of customers, particularly for those living in rural areas with little or no banking infrastructure.

In Bank4YOU we have designed innovative convergent system that combines payment possibilities of mobile airtime, huge market potential of the market not covered by banking services and transactions speed provided by mobile operators. To make the solution east to use, secure, open, fast and stable we are using blockchain. It allows users working in cities to send money home securely to 2 000 000 000 families and friends living in villages and other unbanked areas.

Each time a new transaction is initiated by a sender — our blockchain will generate the internal token of the system — MMR coin, backed up by fiat money ensuring its stability. Supported by the joint platform of mobile operators — the receiver will get mobile airtime which he or she can use to pay for a variety of services and goods. Even withdraw it in cash at specialized agents’ points.

Bank4YOU Group’s Mobile Money Remittance System is an innovative and affordable way of transferring money. Making payments and doing other transactions using a mobile phone will set a new trend in international money transfers and will contribute to the creation of fast, and secure money transfers worldwide. The mobile app, we have been working on will be available in 2018. We aim to cover growing demand for people who are in desperate need of easy access to financial services using just their smartphone in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

What distinguishes Bank4YOU Group’s MMRS from other offerings is its seamless convergence of traditional banking infrastructure, mobile payments enabled over network operators, and the cutting edge of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies — each of which enables a wider choice for the end user depending on their needs and levels of familiarity with technology.

For example, it enables a twenty-something digital native in London to transmit money from her crypto wallet to her grandmother in Lagos, armed with a feature phone and familiar only with mobile network enabled payment systems — without ever having to leave the ecosystem and incur cross platform costs and security risks. It is this convergence of two legacy remittance systems with blockchain efficiencies & security that will create meaningful adoption across multitudes of very divergent developing market segments.