In November 2014, the GSMA released a code of conduct for Mobile Money service providers. Two years in development, the Code aims to ensure that the services offered by mobile money providers are sound, secure, and fair to the customer. This is an important initiative which, if adopted by the mobile money providers, can only lead to growth in digital finance services and improved rates of financial inclusion in developing nations.

The primary beneficiaries of this Code are mobile money customers, with a number of the Code's principles directly addressing key customer concerns:

• Safeguarding customer funds by ensuring that funds equivalent to the mobile money liabilities are securely held in one or more real bank accounts, and protected from the Provider's creditors.
• Improving the services provided by those who interact with customers through due diligence checks, training, and proper oversight of agents and customer care staff.
• Providing reliable operation and security of the network and system used to process transactions. This requires good corporate governance, performance monitoring, as well as platform capabilities such as data encryption, audit trails, and intrusion protection.
• Ensuring fees, charges, and terms and conditions are clearly communicated to and understood by the customer.
• Providing effective mechanisms for addressing customer complaints and dispute resolution.
• Ensuring privacy of customer personal data, and explaining to the customer why the data is collected and how it is used.

Key Services Covered

• Mobile banking, by definition, performs actions on a traditional bank account. These actions involve obtaining account information, and transacting on accounts.
• Mobile payments are payment for goods and services using a personal mobile device as the transaction terminal. Mobile payments can use a traditional bank account or a mobile money account.
• Other services include insurance and microfinance services.

Compliance and Technical Requirements

The Code also includes a requirement to monitor transactions for fraud and AML/CTF activities to meet regulatory requirements and best practices.

Many of these recommendations entail enhanced business processes and practices, but some also require technical capability on the mobile money platform, e.g. processing reversals, providing audit trails, and monitoring transaction values.

The Novatti platforms have been designed from the ground-up to provide the functionality needed to meet the Code's requirements, and we will work with our customers to enable them to achieve the highest levels of conformance.

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