The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
says East African Community countries (EAC) need to undertake a
joint effort to harmonise the legal framework of the different
mobile money system in the region.
In its report ‘Mobile
Money for Business Development in the East Africa Community’, a
comparative study of existing mobile money platforms and
regulations in EAC, the UNCTAD says that Africa has taken the lead
in m-money services.
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“The EAC is a world leader in offering mobile money services and
hosts more than one quarter of all known such systems in Africa […]
with about 60 mobile money services already in place, a quarter
(16) of which are in the EAC. Three of the EAC platforms now have
more than one million active subscribers. M-Pesa, operated by
Safaricom of Kenya, is currently the most popular platform.”
But to avoid the risk of dying from success, the EAC countries
(Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) will need to
implement harmonised regulation focused on “consumer protection,
registration and transaction limits, regulatory collaboration and
interoperability, meaning interconnection between telecommunication
networks.” UNCTAD said.
The UNCTAD said the need for co-operation
between communications and financial regulators is becoming
increasingly critical: “As mobile money grows bigger and draws in
more sectors, as it becomes an important channel for effecting
payments and other types of financial services, new regulators will
have to join the fold.”
However, the UNCTAD notes that mobile money is
not yet on the table. “Dialogue is largely happening at a national
level with Kenya often leading the way owing to the success of
M-Pesa and the fact that they have somewhat longer experience than
the other EAC countries.”
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By GlobalDataThe report said that EAC Governments have
shown strong determination to advance on cyberlaw reforms, “given
in particular the increasing use of mobile phones within and across
countries for business and financial transactions.”
One example is the EAC Task Force on
Cyberlaws, created in 2007 with the support of UNCTAD, which is
aimed at streamlining regulations across the five EAC
countries.
According to the UNCTAD, the EAC Task Force
could possibly contribute to further work on harmonisation in the
area of mobile money services: “The assistance of UNCTAD has helped
EAC to prepare guidelines on electronic transactions, electronic
signatures and authentication, data protection and privacy,
consumer protection, and computer crime.”
