The document summarizes a panel discussion on bringing global lessons from mobile payments to the US. Some key points made are: 1) Regulations and market dynamics differ globally and must be carefully studied; 2) Innovation can be more difficult in the crowded US market dominated by large players; 3) Emerging markets may be better able to keep regulations pace with fast changing technology; 4) Successful mobile payment platforms provide services beyond traditional merchant transactions like transit and utilities; 5) To drive adoption, solutions must meet real customer needs identified through research on user behaviors.

1. Mobile Payments: What Global Lessons can we
bring back to the U.S.?
Organized by MPay Connect, July 23rd, 2012
Introduction by Menekse Gencer (@mpayconnect)
Many aspects differ from one country to another
• Regulations
• Market Dynamics
• Type of payments
• Distribution technology
In order to build effective mobile solutions, key aspects should be carefully studied:
• What is the value proposition (essential although some seem to forget about
it)?
• How to raise awareness around the solution?
• How to make it accessible, relevant and easy to use by both the payers and
the payee?
After this introduction, the panel was presented and started answering to Menekse’s
questions as well as to questions of the audience. I will sum up key points that have
been made, without specifically mentioning who gave the answer/asked the question.
Panel discussion and Q&A
The panel was composed of
• Camille Busette - Office of Financial Education - Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau
• Jon Squire - CMO, CorFire
• Chuck Davidson - Head of Consumer Products at GoPago (worked at
Starbucks in card innovation)
• Gunnar Cammer - former Head of Mobile Payments Product - Tigo in Ghana
(worked on M-Pesa)

2. Getting started with a new idea.
• In the US, innovation can be more difficult than in emerging countries, due to
the fact that the scene is very crowded and dominant players tend to
monopolize the relationship with the consumers.
• On the other end, there is an existing infrastructure so it is quicker to get
going. You don’t have to build everything from scratch (but building from
scratch can also help building more innovative products).
Regulatory aspects
• The regulatory side was much debated. It seems that in the emerging markets,
since the regulatory aspects are not very developed, they tend to be better at
keeping pace with the technology developments. This is more difficult for
mature markets such as the US.
• Plus, the regulations in the U.S. are very fragmented (state by state).
The traditional merchant/consumer relation debate
• Analogies were made between the agent networks in emerging countries and
the retailers in developed countries. Is the agent network becoming obsolete?
• It seems that in the countries where mobile payments has been largely
adopted (especially South Korea & Japan), the solutions where not aimed at
only paying merchants. People would also use the same technology to pay for
transit, gas, electricity, etc. A very interesting point has been made as to
consider mobile payment as a platform, where you can plug all sorts of new
services, in order to go beyond the traditional merchant/consumer relation.
Wherever it is, build solutions that will meet the customer needs
• What does the consumer want? It is very important to start from the user and
build a custom solution. The panel talked about the experiments they made in
Africa, and in Starbucks coffee shops, to decrypt the consumers’ behaviors
and think of solutions that would exactly match their needs. In that case, you
must act like an ethnographer, and be technology agnostic: at that stage any
technology should be considered.