Haiti Mobile Money Initiative

Jan 16, 2011   //   by markhsmith   //   Blog, Consulting, Haiti, Mobile money  //  Comments Off

In July 2010, Univicity got involved with the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI), a USAID/HIFIVE grant initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The HMMI was designed to motivate Haiti’s carriers to implement a Kenya Safaricom MPESA-style mobile money platform. M-PESA allows Safaricom’s customers to make mobile payments (cash-in, cash-out, P2P transfers, etc.) using their mobile phones.

The Haiti Mobile Money Initiative contest is in two phases:

  • First-to-market. Haiti’s first mobile carrier to achieve 10,000 transactions (100 agents, in 100 locations doing 100 cash-in/cash-out transaction each).
  • Scale-up phase.  An 18-month contest that rewards mobile payment transactions. The scale-up phase begins after the first-to-market prize has been awarded.

Univicity partnered with a location Haitian IT company, Transversal, to assist Digicel Haiti in competing for the first to market prize. On January 10, 2011, the first-to-market prize was awarded to Digicel. Tranversal was officially recognized by Digicel’s CEO, Maarten Boute, as helping Digicel achieve the first-to-market goal.

HIFIVE awards Digicel with the HMMI first-to-market award from Mark Smith on Vimeo.

The other Haiti mobile carriers, Voila and Haitel, are still in competition for the second-to-market award of $1.5M.

Digicel has now entered the scale-up phase of the contest. The scale-up phase rewards all forms of mobile money transactions. During this scale-up phase, Univicity will help World Vision Haiti implement mobile money in their cash-for-work programs, which provides temporary jobs for people living in the camps.

Univicity & Transversal will continue to play a major role in Haiti’s mobile money initiative in 2011 and will be instrumental in development and implementing several key mobile money services.

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