WorldRemit founder and CEO Ismail Ahmed will speak at WIRED Money, Together with BBVA, our landmark one-day summit at The British Museum on 8 July.
After 20 years of experience in the money transfer industry, Ahmed founded WorldRemit -- a platform for friends and family separated by geographical boundaries to send one another funds.
Before setting up the business, he worked for the United Nations Remittance Programme, helping African money transfer companies comply with the tough anti-money laundering rules introduced after the 9/11 attacks.
WIRED.co.uk: Ismail,you'll be speaking in theRisks in a Connected World session at WIRED Money alongside Stefan Thomas of Ripple Labs and Mike Lynch of Darktrace. What are you planning to speak about?
Ismail Ahmed: I'll be talking about how fintech and mobile money in particular is transforming lives, businesses and whole economies in developing countries.
Imagine living in a world which revolves around cash. The only way to store money is by literally putting cash under the mattress. You get paid in cash. If you have to pay someone far away, you have to hand cash over to someone you trust who happens to be heading in that direction, and just hope it gets there.
It's hard, it's risky and it's how hundreds of millions of people around the world live today.
But one thing is changing that. Even if most people live without the financial institutions that we're used to, they do have mobile phones. With a basic phone, people can now store money in their own personal account, make payments or send money to another person. This is mobile money.
I'll be discussing how mobile money is already transforming lives, how it's set to grow and also how it reduces the risks of cash.
What sort of risks can mobile money services solve?
Mobile money addresses many of the fraud and money laundering issues associated with cash. Criminals tend to pursue the path of least resistance, and we know that cash is the easiest route for them.
Mobile money transactions leave a digital audit trail which makes it far less attractive for criminals. Mobile money services have strict know your customer (KYC) procedures, which reduce the ability for fraudsters to falsify their details. In some cases, a telecoms operator running a mobile money service knows more about its customers than a bank knows about its customers.
In the remittance industry, mobile-to-mobile transfers can seriously reduce the risk of fraud. At WorldRemit, we don't accept cash as a pay-in method. The majority of our customers now use their mobiles to make transactions.
We make sure that our transactions start at a bank account, and that our users have already gone through legitimate channels and processes with their financial institution. On the receive side, mobile money is a deterrent to fraudsters for the same reasons.
What are you hoping to get out of speaking at WIRED Money, Together with BBVA?
WIRED Money is one of the premier events for fintech and financial innovation in the world.
The Western media too often focuses on fintech innovation that's only relevant to Europe and North America. I want to change that by showing how some of the most innovative and impactful financial technologies are emerging in places like Zimbabwe, Uganda or Bangladesh.
What are your predictions for mobile money services over the next couple of years? Will they eclipse traditional bank accounts? Could this be the end of cash?
In 16 countries -- mostly in Africa -- there are already more people with mobile money accounts than bank accounts.
Mobile money is not a game-changer in the developed world but it is in emerging economies. In 2012, there were 30 million active users of mobile money around the world. Two years ago, that number grew to 60 million users. Now, there are over 103 million active users of mobile money globally.
These numbers will continue to grow as more people get their hands on phones, especially on cheap smartphones.
Mobile money providers are also pioneering some of the most innovative financial services in the developing world, such as low-cost life and health insurance, micro-lending for small entrepreneurs and agricultural financing for smallholder farmers, all facilitated through small micro-payments via mobile money.
Bill Gates and the World Bank have identified mobile money as one of the four technologies that will significantly improve the lives of people in the developing world. It's set to explode.
In 2015 WorldRemit has embarked upon an ambitious programme of international expansion. What's next?
Our service is now available to senders in 50 countries and recipients in over 120, but we want to expand into even more territories.
A big focus for us is the US. The US is the world's biggest remittance market with over $53 billion sent abroad each year. We're looking to rapidly grow our US user base which we're supporting through the expansion of our Denver office (we now have about 50 people there).
Another focus is to build even more partnerships with banks and telcos around the world. Our users can already send to mobile money services such as MTN in Uganda, M-PESA in Kenya or SMART Money in the Philippines, but we want to expand our network of mobile money partners even further.
WIRED Money, Together with BBVA takes place on July 8, 2015 at The British Museum. WIRED subscribers save 10 per cent on tickets. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets for finance sector startups. For more information or to register, please visit www.wired.co.uk/money15.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
