In Thursday’s session at the Global Policy Forum (GPF), David Porteous described m-financial services as simultaneous instruments, channels, and products and posed a challenge to those seeking to regulate them.

John Stanley pointed out that the complexity of these services is magnified by the question of bank-led versus telco-led models. An example of this situation occurred when Kenya’s Equity Bank was forced to rely on the telecoms to deliver m-financial services while at the same time directly competing with their products.

Panelists generally agreed that it is not the role of regulators to dictate the proper business model for mobile financial services. Subsequently, Carlos Lopez stressed that regulations should be neutral on business models and “tech agnostic”, and should instead focus on controls. In response, Raymond Estioko pointed to the challenge of designing controls, noting that technology brings a lot of potential risk, which can have an adverse effect on users if it is not identified and monitored. AFI’s Mobile Financial Services Working Group (MFSWG) is working on identifying some of these risks — information that is sure to be useful to members who are designing their own responses to new m-financial services systems.