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Clickatell SMS powered New Heights Mobile Banking Services
There is a huge opportunity for the underbanked as cell phones become critical in offering banking services to billions. Using Clickatell SMS, New Heights Microfinance Bank Ltd has deployed a suite of microfinance solutions including loans, credit, savings, money transfer services and microinsurance products to serve an eager underbanked market. To address this huge market opportunity and meet the needs of a rapidly expanding customer base, New Heights required a scaleable, SMS-based, mobile messaging solution to improve service delivery and ensure their customers gain immediate access to their suite of microfinance products.
Globally, it has been estimated that only about one-sixth (500 million of an estimated 3 billion) of underprivileged people throughout the world have access to proper financial services. Wherever the poor exist in mass in Nigeria and throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America; emerging financial services providers are addressing the challenge of how to best serve the financial needs of individuals with low socioeconomic status. Microfinance refers to financial services offered to low SES individuals that are excluded from the traditional financial system and often are considered 'unbankable' – lacking collateral, steady employment and verifiable credit history. Aspects of Microfinance, such as microcredit and microloans, are designed to help lift individuals, families and communities out of poverty by providing small loans for personal businesses and start-up capital for entrepreneurial projects, which will presumably help individuals to generate income, build wealth and ultimately exit poverty.
This new way of thinking about banking is sweeping the world, especially in areas of great poverty, as thousands of financial institutions and microfinance service providers have emerged in recent years to address the needs of the underserved, unbanked around the world. The Consultancy Group to Assist the Poor noted, "There is a vast potential market for retail financial services among low-income clients, and a growing number of commercial banks have successfully entered this market."
An estimated 750 million households worldwide don't have a bank account. In Mexico, cash transactions constitute 79 percent of payments. In India, 91 percent. In China, 82 percent. Even in the U.S., 80 million people are in the category of the underbanked. Most people around the world, however, own a mobile phone. Over the past few years, a number of start-ups have put these facts together to form an industry that helps people access banking services on their cell phones. Due to its low cost, ubiquity, instant availability and accessibility on mobile phones around the world, SMS is an ideal medium to communicate, provide status and notifications, and account activations to the underbanked population.
Clickatell
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