M-Commerce, Mobile Wallet and SMS Banking
Study case of the Algerian Market
International Forum of Finance
13th & 14th May 2008, Algiers

White paper by:
Esfih Mohamed, PHD in Payment Systems and E-banking
UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY MALAYSIA

Introduction:

Mobile telecommunications is now a non negligible part and trend of today’s and tomorrow’s technologies.
Indeed, where banking and Broadband penetrations are sometimes limited in third world or developing countries, the Mobile GSM phones are a very common device, that people carry out with them every day, in every country, even in the most remote areas. The GSM networks have surpassed the traditional landline and in most of the world countries today there are more GSM phone subscribers than landline phone subscribers. The reason is very simple.
First the propagation of GSM technologies reaches further and faster, thus covering much more geographical areas with much less costs and efforts than landlines do.
The second point is that it is now affordable for virtually any individual to buy a GSM phone as compared with buying a computer and affording a broadband Internet connection.

..:: Secure SMS ::…

A revolution in Banking and Payment Systems through the GSM networks

Overview

Computers and the Internet are surely here to stay and the impact of information technology is increasingly showing up on just any aspect of our lives. The concept of ‘e-commerce’ which was no more than mere theory a few years ago has now become reality, and more and more services are now available to us via the internet. The increasingly important role played by the conduction of business across cyber space is for each one of us to see.

The most important aspect about the growing impact of the advancements in the realm of technology on our lives lies in the fact that it has caused the world to shrink immeasurably. What used to take days and even weeks to get a message across prior to the coming in of the telephone and the telegraph services got reduced to minutes. With the coming of the World Wide Web however, this got further reduced to seconds and even fractions of it! This new development brought with it a whole new world of possibilities – today what we can do with a computer or a PDA connected to internet is just amaizing, the security protocols are strong enough to allow us to conduct "Secure Transactions" on the internet with an incredible ease. But to do so, we need to be connected to Internet, and even if boradband and wireless Internet access (Wifi, Wimax, 3G/4G, WAP, iMode...) seems to cover large areas, but nothing can come close to the GSM Network in terms of "Human Coverage". Almost every person have a GSM phone, if not 2 phones. We usually carry this device 24 hours a day and there is about no single geographic spot that is not covered by at least one GSM carrier, so in way we can say that Humans are being "connected" permanently through the GSM networks.

Now imagine if every man and woman could, through the most simple GSM Phone, carry out Financial transactions by SMS in a as secure manner as accessing their Online Banking Account... I believe, this ability, would create a REVOLUTION in Payment Systems and the Banking industries. Financial Institutions & organisations could reach 99% of the population, on 99% of the earth ! A bedouin in the middle of the Sahara could initiate a payment to his neighbour with no Internet Access Point nor any Bank in the near 1000 KMs around them...