

The largest payment platform on Earth can reach 2 billion people - dsr12
http://qz.com/5178

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joejohnson
I must have missed the explanation on the chart showing Mobile Penetration by
country. Can someone explain how a country like Vietnam has 173% penetration?
Does a penetration greater than 100% mean many people have two cell phones?

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brendn
I've heard (but can't find a link ATM) that it's not uncommon for people in
developing countries have multiple phones or multiple SIM cards and will call
on one or the other depending on that provider's current rates.

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stefanu
Not only that, but I know also many freelancers that have one personal
phone/sim and one business phone/sim.

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jusben1369
Is it the largest payment platform in the world or the largest advertising
platform in the world that just happens to do payments?

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nicpottier
This actually stemmed from an idea Nathan Eagle had a few years ago trying to
Mechanical Turk the developing world. The idea being to send micro-tasks
(often translation) to people via SMS, then paying them upon successful
completion.

That never took off with much traction that I know of, primarily because it
was hard to find micro-tasks that were worth the money.

There is this very weird legal distinction in Africa between airtime and
actual money. Mobile money systems like mPesa are more and more prevalent, but
if you stop and think for a minute everybody has been loading their phones
with 'cash' for time eternal. (and been able to transfer it about)

It is only the addition of being able to remove the money from the network as
cash that makes mobile money different. But as pointed in the FA, people spend
so much money on airtime that for small values of x mobile money and airtime
are equivalent.

In any case, smart move by Nathan, it is much easier making deals with
carriers to buy large swaths of their airtime than integrate with their
totally varied mobile money systems.

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ChuckMcM
I think what nicpottier writes above is the insight to take away from JANA,
basically communications budget is a fungible commodity for a lot of people.
They really want their communication, there is a way to 'barter' communication
credits for work. This works really well because there are more than enough
ways to 'spend' mobile credits. Given a currency 'mobile minutes' an exchange
rate to the local currency, and a market maker (the telcos) to enable both the
currency exchange and the ability to transact and its a pretty cool
opportunity.

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rootedbox
The worlds largest payment platform has reached way more than 2 billion.. It's
called the U.S. Dollar. I've never been in a Country where it has not been
accepted.

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s_henry_paulson
I'm an American that travels extensively, as well as lives abroad.

The only places outside the US that accept US dollars are places located near
the US border, or heavily trafficked tourist areas.

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stellar678
Lots of people in Latin America prefer to work with dollars when they can.
Look at what the government of Argentina has been up to recently in terms of
limiting the population's access to US dollars if you don't believe this.

People in high-inflation places can benefit from holding dollars instead of
their local currency - and one easy way to get ahold of them is just to accept
them as payment for goods or services.

