Quisk says Jamaica is fertile ground for mobile banking software
DAVID Koerner, director of marketing at Silicon Valley-based start-up Quisk, Inc thinks that Jamaica’s comparatively high mobile phone penetration makes it ideally suited for the introduction of its Finovate mobile banking solution.
“Some Jamaicans have two phones – one Digicel and a Flow!” an excited Koerner told the Jamaica Observer, as he recalled some of his experiences in working with the National Commercial Bank (NCB) and other local financial institutions over the past six years, during NCB’s Tech Symposium at the Terra Nova Hotel, last Wednesday.
“I think that Jamaica is unique because, beyond Kingston, you have folks who live in the hills who don’t have ready access to a traditional bank, but they own a mobile phone,” Koerner explained.
According to him, with up to 65 per cent of Jamaicans being “underbanked” or “unbanked” – meaning that they do not have a bank account and do not use banks or credit unions for their financial transactions, despite 95 per cent mobile penetration – his company’s involvement in developing a uniquely Jamaican solution is a very exciting prospect.
Quisk and Advanced Integrated Systems (AIS), Jamaica’s transaction processing provider, have partnered to provide mobile money solutions for Jamaica and the Caribbean.
In his presentation at the NCB Tech Symposium, Koerner demonstrated how the process operates.
The new Jamaican mobile money solution, which has been six years in the making, was not created by Americans or Europeans but was designed by Jamaicans to assist the Jamaican market.
Quisk and AIS share the belief that the opportunity for financial inclusion in Jamaica is latitude for volume transactions.
They insist that Jamaicans are faced with significant challenges developing relationships with their banks and are burdened with the rising cost of transaction fees. So, they have planned some key benefits for the unbanked and underbanked Jamaican customers, including an easy to sign up process, requiring minimal personal information.
The mobile money solution works on any network carrier in the island, and can be accessed on smartphones, iPods, tablets or computers as well as regular mobile feature phones.
From a regulatory standpoint, the solutions will have to meet the AML and KYC criteria with automated limits and account maximum designed into the system, conforming to the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) banking standards and customers being protected via SMS receipts and account balance checks.
The banks will implement a low-cost solution to map all existing accounts to new mobile cash payment types, as well as implement risk control. Not only will the merchant have point-of-sale (POS) interoperability and low-cost POS app and tablet alternatives to reduce capital cost and risk, but they will be able to do real-time transactions with daily settlements, decreasing loss and theft.
In 2010, Quisk began working in Jamaica with AIS to develop the cash-based, bank-led, mobile payment solution.
The technology will allow any Jamaican with a mobile number on any network to securely access their money quickly and easily without needing cash or cards.
A cloud-based transaction processing platform is designed to work across multiple issuers, and is scalable across endless transaction types to leverage existing point-of-sale infrastructure and systems to meet the needs of Jamaican account holders and the region.
NCB announced in January this year that it has successfully completed the pilot for the mobile banking solution, and expects to get BOJ approval for its use in 2016, after it gets final regulatory approval.
The bank says it is spending some $500 million to roll it out, as well as a suite of other digital initiatives which will improve customer experience in using money services and also affect internal operations.
Using the Finovate 2014 software developed by US-based Quisk, the mobile money solution will enable customers to leverage their mobile phones to send money to family and friends and pay for goods and services.
The cashless and cardless solution, using multiple encryption levels and with other security features, allows cellphone users to have a mobile wallet for spending and transfers, using only their phone number and PIN. It does not require a smartphone.