A quick glimpse at the GSMA Mobile Money Deployment Tracker reveals roughly two hundred mobile money deployments globally.  In countries like Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia, that translates to at least four mobile money deployments per market.  At the extreme end – in Nigeria – it translates to the issuing of at least eighteen provisional mobile money licenses.  The explosion of mobile money services throughout the Global South begs the question: Are mobile operators launching mobile money services because they can or because they should?  Has mobile money become the obligatory offering?  

 In Kenya, the birthplace of M-PESA, end users can choose between Safaricom M-Pesa, Airtel Money, Essar yuCash, Orange Money, Tangaza, MobiKash, or any mix of the six.  In theory, the following issues should inform which service(s) an end user ultimately chooses:

• How much are the tariffs? 
• How accessible and reliable is the agent network? 
• How intuitive is the user experience? 
• What system do the majority of my contacts use? 
• Is the system integrated with other services I use?  

In practice, however, the issues above all point to a single, more fundamental question:  How seriously does the mobile operator take its mobile money offering?  Do they approach mobile money as a loss leader / value-added service (VAS), or do they approach it as a standalone business?  

How a mobile operator answers that question – VAS or standalone business? – seems to dictate how well their mobile money offering is financed, implemented and, consequently, received by potential customers.  Operators that approach mobile money as a VAS, for instance, tend to follow a pattern.  The operator: 

1. Spends millions of dollars marketing the service, 
2. Neglects the fundamentals (strong / reliable agent network, key partnerships, etc.), 
3. Fails to differentiate the service from existing services on the market, and 
4. Ultimately disenchants its potential customers in the first months of operation.  

On the other hand, operators that approach mobile money as they would a standalone business (excluding third party providers like Paga, Tangaza, and TxtNpay whose standalone business is mobile money) tend to follow the opposite pattern.  The operator:

1. Commits significant time and resources to build the necessary infrastructure, 
2. Works with the parties involved to coordinate a simultaneous countrywide launch, 
3. Launches an intensive marketing campaign that projects a clear, compelling, and consistent value proposition, and 
4. Integrates with various institutions and payment channels in order to build an ecosystem around it service. 

Rolling out a mobile money service is nontrivial and, admittedly, will likely account for only a small percentage of a mobile operator’s revenue.  Nevertheless, if a mobile money service is rolled out like any other VAS it is almost destined to either fail or flounder.    Simply put, a mobile operator that approaches mobile money as ‘the obligatory offering’ shouldn’t approach mobile money at all.