Resource Sharing — Mobile Money’s Inevitable Next Step
Cars that we don’t own.
I’m a member of Car2go, a car-sharing service. There’s something about being able to walk to any Car2go car on the street, drive to my destination, and then leave it there that appeals to my sense of “future.” I use Gmail, Dropbox, and Airbnb. We all use mobile phones. Most of us use the internet. We all use roads.
These are all examples of resource sharing, at various levels. They have grown as a way for consumers to gain access to better services, higher quality tools, and more efficient systems than they’d otherwise be able to afford. Sharing resources shares cost, which often drives down the price of a particular product or service. It also transfers costs — setup, maintenance and the like — from the user to the service provider, from within the business to another business. I don’t have to remember to service my Car2go in order to drive to work, or maintain an email server just to send a friend a message.
Old ideas for a new age.
The idea of spreading resources isn’t new. Virtually every industry can be modeled as a stack of layered services. Each layer uses services below it, and provides services to the layers above. And within any layer, horizontal spreading — resource sharing, can be used to discover efficiency. This same intrinsic model has been applied to different industries to come up with exciting business models and disruptive services. Just look at how many services cooperate to bring you content on this website; computer manufacturers, browser developers, website developers, internet advertising companies, etc. All of them are gainfully benefiting from shared participation in the value chain.
Are shared m-money platforms feasible?
The mobile money industry is ripe for such innovation. Worldwide, mobile money services are being lauded as the banks of the future. Telecommunications providers are building valuable backbone infrastructure. Over this infrastructure, businesses and organizations are building costly, highly-customized point solutions.
Software as a Service (SaaS) makes sense as an inevitable next step for this industry. The “solutions” layer must spread horizontally as common use-cases are discovered. It must leverage resource sharing and drive down implementation costs. Because mobile money is growing upwards, it is attracting much attention from groups that work with the bottom of the pyramid (the huge population of people with little or no access to formal financial services). These groups include non-profit organizations, donor organizations, and government welfare programs.
Looking forward: impact will drive technology choice.
Such interest groups will drive this horizontal spreading when we realize that there is a significant overlap in program scope. With this realization, we will become aware of the inevitable waste that happens when we continue to build vertically rather than share resources. Waste is counter-intuitive to our goals of eliminating poverty, disease and early death. Technology providers will realize that while interventions must be deep, technology must be layered, horizontal, and shareable. We will begin to invest in layered platforms that catalyze this horizontal spreading, as eagerly as we invest in deeply integrated interventions.
Over the next decade, we can expect to see more service companies offering enterprise-level products that allow organizations of all sizes to participate in, and benefit from, mobile money services.
Luke Kyohere is CEO of Beyonic, a mobile solutions company dedicated to increasing social impact through mobile technology. In his various roles, he manages and consults on technology for multi-national development projects. For more information on how he and his team are creating impact visit www.beyonic.com
Photo credit: Hallgrimsson
Originally published at beyonic.com on November 22, 2013.
