Amdocs Mobile Financial Services Sees Opportunity Ahead

There’s a lot of opportunity these days in mobile banking, whether it’s mobile payments, cash transfers, or other services that’s drawing a lot of firms into the field.

Amdocs, a global leader of software and services for telecom providers, has announced its plans to not only go after the mobile unbanked of developing economies, but also to offer a new and unified mobile wallet and payments experience to developed markets as well.

Amdocs offered up a treasure trove of information in a report looking at both the mobile financial services market and Amdocs’ own response to said market.

The mobile financial market, Amdocs revealed, was patently huge, and posed enormous opportunity to those willing to get in.

Emerging markets were often getting a brand-new taste of banking, and as such, needed access to affordable services and more than one option for payment. Meanwhile, developed markets—who already had access to multiple payment options and services—needed a greater focus on retail, which gave Amdocs a pretty clear path forward in terms of providing for both sides of the development aisle.

Amdocs noted that 2.5 billion of the world’s population of around seven billion were unbanked, and out of that 2.5 billion, at least 1.7 billion—around 68 percent of the total—had a mobile phone of some kind.

India is showing itself to be a growing player in the field, as a proliferation of inexpensive Android devices is arriving in the country, thus providing the necessary platform for such services.

Indeed, out of that 2.5 billion, and 1.7 billion with phones, there are just 203 million registered mobile money users, and even among that 203 million, just 61 million are active users, leaving a huge slice of the market untapped.

What’s more, even among developed markets, there’s a clear resistance toward banks.

Seventy-one percent of respondents in a survey of 10,000 Millennials revealed that they would sooner go to the dentist than to a bank, and given that a dentist spends a lot of time shoving pointy bits of metal around a mouth, that’s saying something. A third of those respondents believe that, soon, a bank won’t be necessary at all. Mobile platforms like Amdocs’ might just prove them right.

This in turn is why Amdocs is looking to get in on the action with some powerful new options, most notably, a complete, all-in-one platform that covers several sections of the mobile banking field at once.

Amdocs has highlighted India, specifically its new partnership with the State Bank of India (SBI) and mobile network operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for the announcement of the Amdocs Mobile Financial Services platform.

Amdocs Mobile Financial Services, a platform developed in association with India-based Triotech, offers the ability to pay using a mobile-based prepaid card, or even a loyalty card as some businesses are looking into. The Amdocs solution can incorporate coupons and other offers, a connected credit or debit card, or even route a purchase directly to a telephone bill, affording a substantial number of options in total.

A solution like this can serve several purposes at once, not only giving customers the opportunity to make purchases that would have otherwise been unavailable, but also giving businesses the opportunity to sell to those customers. Even banks can get involved in the action, serving as routing mechanisms for the payments in question as well as secure storage for the same.

Mobile network operators—on the backs of whose network runs the bulk of these transactions—can even get an advantage in the market by offering such services as a way to distinguish themselves from a steadily-growing pack. The platform itself is a white-label solution, with features that can be enabled or disabled as their partners see fit. These features also include order-ahead capability, person-to-person money transfers, and loyalty and rewards support for merchant partners.

Chris Williams, Head of Global Marketing at Amdocs, stressed the truly global reach of this new platform thanks to the company’s existing relationships with telecom providers and banks around the world. It’s a consumer segment that he says, needs “financial literacy, financial inclusion, and new technology ecosystems, and that’s part of what we’re trying to do with SBI.”

The Amdocs Mobile Financial Services platform is a natural extension, and perhaps an evolution of telecom providers’ relationship with their customers. Amdocs’ existing relationships, and the do-it-all nature of the platform makes it a serious challenger for multiple verticals in the mobile money and mobile wallet scene, especially in the unbanked and underbanked segments.