As Latin America’s mobile market grows to dwarf other telecom services in the region, new business
opportunities for mobile-based services such as mobile banking will arise. Mobile banking is just getting started, but it was one of the first examples of an internet-based service finding a place on a mobile
device (the first initiatives in Latin America arose in 2000 via SMS alerts and in 2002 via WAP portals). Consequently, its challenges,
opportunities, successes and failures no doubt will be important to the development of other financial applications such as mcommerce
and m-payments.
Latin America shows strong potential for mobile banking as the region has a significant portion of unbanked users (i.e., people who do
not have a bank account). The service could be a cheap and effective way to attract these largely prepaid mobile customers to use
banking services. Exhibit 1 shows that, on average, Latin America has only a 31% banking account penetration among the adult
population—with only Chile, Brazil and Colombia exceeding the average. However, Latin America’s average penetration of unique
mobile phone users is 57.5%, thus representing a significant opportunity to attract unbanked mobile phone users.
Currently, three different business models support mobile banking initiatives in the region. In this Yankee Group Report, we compare
these models to leading global initiatives to determine where the greatest opportunities are and which model will address them best.
We also explore consumer expectations and propose an adoption model that takes into account the factors that will guide consumer
uptake of mobile banking services.
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