One of the most difficult – and strategically important – issues that a mobile operator must tackle is developing an agent network. The network serves as the customer’s bridge between cash and e-money; it represents the human face of a service, and the vehicle for boosting product awareness, customer education and registration.
Below are articles, case studies, blog posts and other resources that operators will find useful for researching this topic.
1. WHAT ARE MOBILE MONEY AGENTS?
Introduction: Building, Incentivising and Managing a Network of Mobile Money agents
Author: Neil Davidson and Paul Leishman, GSMA
For an overview of agent networks read this introductory chapter to ‘Building, Incentivising and Managing a Network of mobile money agents’, GSMA’s 2010 handbook.
What are mobile money agents and what functions do they perform?
Author: GSMA
This video provides basic background information on mobile money agents, their responsibilities and the functions they perform.
2. HOW CAN OPERATORS BUILD A NETWORK OF MOBILE MONEY AGENTS?
Building a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Author: Neil Davidson and Paul Leishman, GSMA
This article explores issues operators face as they build an agent network. It discusses what agents do, how big an agent network should be, how agents are recruited, and other important questions.
What should operators look for in a prospective agent?
Author : GSMA
What qualities should an agent have? This video highlights what operators need in a mobile money agent including proper liquidity management, a good location, and community trust.
3. HOW CAN OPERATORS INCENTIVISE A NETWORK OF MOBILE MONEY AGENTS?
Incentivising a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Author : Neil Davidson and Paul Leishman, GSMA
How can mobile operators encourage agents to become active and productive in mobile money distribution? Learn what transactions agents are paid for and how commissions get paid out.
GSMA Webinar on Mobile Money Pricing and Commissions
Author: Paul Leishman and Camilo Tellez, GSMA
These videos are designed to provide mobile operators with a clear understanding of the process that’s used to develop mobile money prices and commissions. It covers a mix of theory and real world examples, and simulates the development process for an imaginary service. (Available in Spanish).
Commissions
4. How can operators manage a network of mobile money agents?
Managing a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Author : Neil Davidson and Paul Leishman, GSMA
This article explores how to manage and motivate an agent network, answering questions such as ‘How do operators ensure agents are liquid?’ and demonstrating options for selling electronic value to the channel.
Three Keys to M-PESA’s Success: Branding, Channel Management and Pricing
Author : Ignacio Mas and Amolo Ng’weno, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
On pages 7-11 of this case study on Safaricom’s M-PESA, the authors explain how Safaricom’s channel management strategy contributed to their success. It describes the options stores have for rebalancing liquidity, including through master-agents and super-agents.
Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents
Author : Paul Leishman, GSMA
This video explores the role that Top Image – a field-marketing agency – plays in Safaricom’s successful M-PESA agent network. Top Image performs several key functions, including training agents, monitoring float, and supervising activations.
5. OTHER RESOURCES
Agent Management Toolkit: Building a Viable Network of Branchless Banking Agents
Author : Mark Flaming, Claudia McKay, & Mark Pickens, CGAP
This practical guide shows providers how to build a viable network of agents, based on over a year’s research on agents in Brazil, India, and Kenya. In-depth interviews were conducted with 466 agents and dozens of network managers and providers.
Bridges to Cash: The retail end of M-PESA
Author : Frederik Eijkman, Jake Kendall, & Ignacio Mas, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
This case study analyses 20 M-PESA retail outlets managed by an aggregator, PEP Intermedius. It presents observations on the complexities of managing agents, including how often (and why) stores rebalance liquidity, differences between urban and rural agents, and more.
Related BLOG POSTS
- Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Should you be cutting your inactive agents?
“There is no “deadwood” – after 3 months of no commissions, agents are put on a warning list. Then, if there are 3 more months of no activity, they are cut. Any issues of compliance will be dealt with severely – even small issues of customer overchar... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
“I am worried that agent training is time consuming & resource intensive …do I have to invest to train my channel?”
Agent training is a powerful lever to drive agent performance. This week, MMU held a webinar to dialogue with mobile money managers about how to design and implement impactful and cost effective trainings. In the first section of the webinar, Yasmina and Gerry... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Designing and delivering effective agent training programmes
There’s more to agent training than just training agents Agent networks in mobile money thrive when they have convenient ways to access liquidity, compelling commissions, well merchandised and monitored shops and, well trained agents. Well trained agents ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Benchmarking with the best
One of the key objectives of the 2011 Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey was to give managers of mobile money deployments better insight into the performance of their service relative to others. This is why we prepared a confidential, customised benchmarking ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Why do mobile money agents get paid less than airtime retailers?
In most markets, if you compare the margin that retailers earn from selling prepaid airtime to the commissions that mobile money agents earn buying or selling e-money, you will find that the former is almost always higher than the latter. This makes recruiting... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Innovation in mobile money distribution: real-time electronic reporting on agent performance
Mobile money platforms that rely on networks of cash-in/cash-out agents to take in and pay out cash need that network to be healthy in order to offer customers a compelling value proposition. The lynchpin of channel health is liquidity, but compliance with c... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Innovation in mobile money distribution: TigoPesa’s roving agents
As I discussed in a recent blog post, what makes the economics of mobile money so different from the economics of traditional banking is the reduction in costs for cash in, cash out, and transaction processing. The lower these costs are, the lower fees for cus... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents Part 2
This is the second part of the video from MMU’s session on Quality Assurance at the agent Level. in this part, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of Top Image answers questions from the audience regarding the role Top Image plays in M-PESA’s distribution network. ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents Part 1
In these two videos filmed during the last MMU working Group in Singapore, we explore the role that Top Image, a below-the-line field marketing agency, has played in developing and maintaining Safaricom’s successful M-PESA agent network. Top Image performs... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
GSMA Hosts Webinar on Mobile Money Pricing and Commissions - Part 2 TBD
This is the second part of the GSMA webinar on the topic of mobile money pricing and commisions . This interactive session was designed to help mobile money practitioners capture best practices from deployments around the world. In this post, we are sharing th... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
GSMA Hosts Webinar on Mobile Money Pricing and Commissions - Part 1
On December 14th, the MMU programme at the GSMA hosted a webinar on the topic of mobile money pricing and commissions. This interactive session was designed to help mobile money practitioners capture best practices from deployments around the world. In this fi... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Sharing the pain, sharing the cash merchants
The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Mireya Almazan, Associate Program Officer and Ignacio Mas, Deputy Director from the FSP program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Building and managing a cash merchant network is the lea... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Getting the Agent Commission Model Right
By now, most mobile money practitioners recognize that for a service to succeed, the agents that support it need to be making money. In recent months, we’ve written about how mobile network operators have carefully managed their customer/ agent ratios over t... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
GSMA publish Part 3 of the Handbook on Agent Networks: How to Manage a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Today the MMU team is delighted to release the final section of our handbook on mobile money agent networks: Managing a Mobile Money Agent Network. This instalment discusses managing a network of mobile money agents on an ongoing basis. In this article, we ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Part 2 of GSMA Handbook on Agent Networks: How to Incentivise a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Today we are publishing the second section of the GSMA handbook on agent networks, entitled “How to Incentivise a Network of Mobile Money Agents”. In this section, we seek to answer a broad question: how can mobile network operators design a set of incenti... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
GSMA Publishes Handbook on Agent Networks: How to Build, Incentivise and Manage a Network of Mobile Money Agents
Over the last several years, distribution has proven one of the most difficult pieces of the mobile money business to get right. Even with the accumulated experience of distributing airtime in their markets-often through thousands of retailers-mobile network o...
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