Mobile money deal with Bharti

What was up with the cell phone companies too? Vodacom is close to their all time highs, MTN is not too far away from theirs. I suppose that if you "add back" the very recent MTN dividend you are beyond that all time high comfortably. Telkom? They too have been on a tear. It depends though where you draw your line in the sand though. Telkom remains a worse investment than either of these mobile companies, we still maintain that MTN is still in the early stages of transition towards becoming a provider of more data to their relatively low (globally) on a ARPU basis customer base. The fact that fixed line infrastructure has been essentially "skipped" across our continent is good news for the mobile providers, the big risks for them is that they become more utility like. But, with mobile money becoming increasingly important for the mobile providers, these businesses are changing and morphing into something different. Just this morning we have another announcement from MTN, teaming up with Bharti:

"The landmark partnership will enable Mobile Money customers of MTN Ivory Coast and Airtel in Burkina Faso to easily transfer money between the neighbouring countries. Until now, moving money between the two countries was mired by high fees, high usage of informal channels and a lack of proximity to withdraw money."

I guess that the channels that normally transfer the funds attract prohibitive fees, so these sorts of innovations are certainly excellent news for the consumers. And as for the likes of Western Union and their peers, this news represents a seismic shift of sorts. This is just another idea that sees the business morph into something else over time, payment solutions are going to continue to grow aggressively. This is great news for regulators, less cash, more transparency, so this will be encouraged and there will be little interference (you would think) from governments. Good news all around.