Islamabad: Easypaisa is considering the use of voice-enabled authentication in its services across Pakistan, revealed Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA).
The GSMA in its latest report “State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2022” stated that the Biometrics for All (B4LL) was initially trialed in Pakistan with leading mobile money provider Easypaisa to simulate a voice-enabled IVR call centre experience (in Urdu) for their customers. The aim was to help Easypaisa assess whether the technology would be useful for its customers and, if so, to adopt it more widely in its operations. Feedback on the pilot has been favourable and Easypaisa is considering next steps on the use of voice-enabled authentication in its services across Pakistan, it added.
“B4LL has been a highly useful asset for us to assess the utility of voice enabled biometric verification techniques for our customers and we are delighted to be working with the GSMA Inclusive Tech Lab on this partnership” quoting Omar Moeen Malik, Head of Easypaisa – Business, Telenor Microfinance Bank in the report.
Following the pilot in Pakistan, B4LL was launched as a mobile app with voice, fingerprint and facial recognition capabilities, and its code was released as open source. Despite the range of biometric authentication options available, B4LL solutions are targeted at LMICs and therefore built to be used on feature phones and low-tech smartphones. B4LL is not a commercial service. It is simply intended to bridge the gap between digital service providers and biometric vendors, and accelerate the adoption of biometric authentication methods in emerging markets.
In 2018, the GSMA introduced the Mobile Money Regulatory Index (MMRI). The MMRI identifies six enablers of a successful mobile money service: authorisation, consumer protection, transaction limits, KYC, agent networks and investment and infrastructure environment. Each enabler is weighted based on its contribution to mobile money to thrive.
In 2020, 14 countries recorded improvements (+1% or more) in their regulatory environments. These were Angola, Egypt, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Nepal, Pakistan, and the eight countries belonging to the West African Monetary Union (WAMU).
According to the GSMA Consumer Survey, uptake and demand for mobile money-enabled credit appears to be healthy. Results showed that those using mobile money to access loans range from two percent of respondents in some countries to 36 percent in others. There is generally higher uptake of loans in markets with higher prevalence of mobile money, particularly Kenya (36 percent). India (18 percent) and Pakistan (16 percent) are the exception – although both countries have low to medium mobile money prevalence, uptake of loans is still relatively high.
The gender gap in mobile money awareness is lower than that for mobile ownership in seven of the 10 countries, demonstrating the importance of addressing the mobile ownership gap to improve financial inclusion for women. In Pakistan, for instance, 77 percent of men and 70 percent of women have heard of at least one mobile money brand, whereas 76 percent of men but only 51 percent of women own a mobile phone.
In Pakistan, 76 percent of men and 51 percent of women own a mobile phone, 77 percent of men and 70 percent of women have heard of at least one national brand of mobile money, but only 19 percent of men and six percent of women have a mobile money account.
The largest gender gaps in mobile money account ownership are in the South Asian survey countries, as observed in Pakistan (71 percent), India (68 percent) and Bangladesh (52 percent).
The report noted that in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Indonesia and Pakistan, a higher proportion of female mobile owners than men reported lack of family approval was preventing them from having a mobile money account (responses were more similar among men and women in the other four countries.
In Pakistan, female mobile money users are more likely than their male counterparts to have received money from friends and relatives and the government via mobile money in the last 12 months. They are also more likely to have used mobile money to pay for services such as labour and deliveries, it added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
Comments
Comments are closed.