Chief Executive Officer of Mobile Money Limited, Eli Hini, has disclosed that mobile money has made it possible for Ghanaians to transact and interact within the financial ecosystem in the country.

According to him, the merger between mobile wallets and banking accounts is “already here” and people are currently “building solutions” on top of other platforms. Buttressing his point, Mr Hini explained that mobile money has developed an “open API” that is allowing businesses and start-ups to “develop solutions on top of the existing ones”.

Speaking on the topic: ‘Understanding consumer trends in today’s world’, Mr Hini revealed that what is important is to focus on what the customer is seeking and “how we can meet those demand”.

“Before mobile money, lots of Ghanaians did not have access to our financial ecosystem because they didn’t have bank accounts. But now because of mobile money they have that access. They are able to interact with anything within the financial ecosystem. They are able to do investments, savings, insurance and anything a regular bank customer is able to do. So, that has brought the experience of financial solutions to all Ghanaians today; so, you don’t need a bank account to do that. But even if you have a bank account you have another opportunity to extend services using another platform that facilitates payment and other solutions that is leveraging the same banking solutions…”
Mr Eli Hini

Changing patterns in customer behaviour

Following the advent of COVID-19, Mr Hini revealed that this has pushed businesses to go online to ply their trade. This, he noted, has resulted to “smartphone penetration” soar with the possiblity of apps becoming popular, because on the app, “the experience is better”.

Mr Hini indicated that one of the ways customer needs can be addressed is by looking at how they can be supported when they use one’s “service”. With this, he intimated that “self-service” will become even more important so that many more people can do a lot of things on their own.

“The lifestyle of the customer is changing and all these are coming through. Along all these will also be things around e-commerce. E-commerce is going to boom. It’s already strong in other economies but in these parts, we can only get better with it. So, e-commerce is another thing we should also expect”.
Mr Eli Hini

From the industry point of view, Mr Hini disclosed that such solutions present opportunities for businesses to take advantage of transformations and changes in customer behaviour. He reckons that businesses will now be able to look at how people shop and that data will help them to look at what kind of solutions would become available and interesting.

“Supply chains will also become a bit more efficient with these kinds of insight, then you can predict the things you want to shop for… So, it’s going to make business a lot more exciting, but there’s also the other side where data protection becomes another issue. Within that context, you’ll see that whiles the customer’s behaviour is changing then businesses must also adopt new strategies and innovate to be able to meet those demands. That’s were we see the industry going”.
Mr Eli Hini