Social media is the best tool for spreading awareness and driving adoption of mobile money services in new markets, according to Vytas Paukstys, chief executive officer at Eskimi.
Mobile money, with the exception of Kenya where Safaricom has enjoyed rapid growth of its M-Pesa platform since its launch in 2007, has been slow to spread across the continent as it faces different challenges in each country with networks, banks and regulators often struggling to find the right model for their respective market.
Paukstys, speaking at AfricaCom 2013 in Cape Town yesterday (Wednesday), said Eskimi launched its own mobile money marketing platform to its 7.7 million Nigerian users in 2012 when the concept was taking its first steps in the country.
Eskimi saw potential in a marketing model because Nigeria should be ripe for mobile money, but it was experiencing slow growth.
Compared to Kenya, where 40 per cent of the population were using M-Pesa accounts three years after it launched, only 5 per cent of Nigerians were using mobile money three years after services became available in that country.
“Obviously something is very wrong in Nigeria and that is to do with the education around mobile money,” Paukstys said.
“Mobile money rollout has to include social media. When M-Pesa was launched this was not relevant, but now it is the best chance.”
Paukstys believes the type of people who use social media is the same audience which should be adopting mobile money.
He said: “The first thing that is very important is this audience is urban. They do transactions once a week or once a month that can be substituted with mobile money.”
According to Eskimi figures, 91 per cent of social media users live in the city, while 82 per cent of people living in the city already transfer money to their friends and family in rural areas.
Paukstys added that social media sites already hold all the relevant data, which users need to input when setting up a mobile money account and so could help ease the registration and account creation process.
“This means there are customers who are just one click away from signing up with a mobile money service,” he added.
He also believes with the engaging nature of social media, retention of subscribers would be more effective.
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