Your Roadmap to tackling regional challenges and developing commercially viable mobile payments solutions for South Asia and Indian Ocean Region

2nd Indian Ocean / South Asia Mobile Payments & Banking Summit 2013 is the only strategic platform for all industry stakeholders with an interest in tapping into the growing economies of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Seychelles and Afghanistan arising from the rapid growth & affluence in the South Asian & Indian Ocean region.

According to a recent study by Boston Consulting Group the mobile payment and banking transactions would reach $350bn by 2015, measured against approximately $235bn of credit and debit card purchases at present. Peer-to-peer remittances are expected to deliver $70bn by 2015, mostly as people in metropolitan hubs transferring funds to their families in rural areas. In India alone there are already 771m mobile subscribers, with 548m considered to be active, compared with the 240m people holding bank accounts. Most of the people in urban India have bank accounts but 90-95% still mostly using cash for their day to day needs. The same situation occurs in Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries of the region.

There are around 160 million people in Bangladesh, of which, only 9% have bank accounts, but more than 44% own a mobile phone that makes Bangladesh an ideal market for the introduction of mobile financial services.

Bangladesh is one of the fastest developing markets for branchless-banking in the world and it creates opportunities for bringing more unbanked segments of the society into the financial network by offering services as opening of a bank account, cash withdrawal and depositing of money, as well as receiving remittances.