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 was 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.
Mark Smith worked with Transversal, a Haitian IT company, 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.
The other Haiti mobile carrier, Voila, won the second-to-market prize in June 2011.
Transversal continues to play a major role in Haiti’s mobile money initiative through it’s innovative MerchantPro platform that is currently being used by UNDP, CARE and CRS to manage their electronic voucher programs in Haiti.
Further reading:
- Plugging into Mobile Money Platforms: Early experiences of NGO’s in the field (Haiti Mobile Money Initiative
- Mobile Money in Haiti: Strategies for a multi-competitor, multi-industry market
- Gates Foundation prize announcement
- News about Haiti Mobile Money Initiative
- Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion – Haiti Blog
- Designing Mobile Money Services: Lessons from M-PESA
- The Economics of Branchless Banking
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