Discussion on Mobile Financial Systems (MFS) in Mumbai

To initiate discussion on Mobile Financial Systems (MFS) and create an ecosystem for the concurrent issue, Financial Inclusion and the development of Payment Systems (FIPS) in association with Catallyst Constellations, a new age management advisory organization will hold the first round table on the topic of ‘Inclusion and Mobile Financial Services’ on 25th January, Saturday at Taj Palace Hotel in Mumbai.

The FIPS forum will see the participation of the best of the minds from various ecosystem players in the area of Financial Inclusion in the country such as  G. Padmanabhan, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India, R Chandrasekhar, President, Nasscom, AP Hota, CEO, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India ) A K Bhargava, Director-Operations, USOF, Priyanka Lodha, CEO and MD, Adarsh Credit Cooperative Society, Mehboob Chowdhury, CEO, CityCell Bangladesh & FIPS Board Member, Meera Sanyal, Former Chairperson, RBS, Suresh Sethi, CEO - mPesa, Vodafone, Sriram Jagannathan CEO, Airtel Money, Dr. Sumit Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Jio Infocomm etc;
added, “In addition to these,  policy makers like Adviser to Finance Minister, Dr. Parthasarathi Shome, Rajiv Takru (Finance Secretary), Senior Bureaucrats at Secretary level at Central as well as various states, MDs of various banks (both public sector as well as private), Insurance companies, Microfinance companies (like Bandhan), NGO (like IFMR), key academicians, as well as global players like Master Card, and host of expert participants from TRAI, NASSCOM,
Planning Commission, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India ) academicians and many more from India as well as other agile & emerging markets.

“About 47.8% of the population is still unbanked- in India. To spread finance to more and more Indians, we have to embrace low-cost mobile-banking. India has lagged Africa in embracing this technology. Financial Inclusion and Payment Systems (FIPS) are pertinent points of discussion today for the telecom companies as well. Although the scope and possible impact of MFS is very high in India, but success, in terms of adoption by the customers, seems to be happening at a slower pace than expected,” Prof. Rajanish Dass, President, Catallyst Constellations said.

The round table will emerge as a platform for the best minds to come together and discuss on policy gaps and indentifying the issues and challenges across the various stake holders in the MFS ecosystem, pin-point regulatory and adoption issues towards successful MFS rollout in the country and various facets pertaining to the issues and challenges in MFS.

The Knowledge Quest will not just be a one day conference discussing the key concerns of Inclusion & the role of MFS in it, but will essentially be a host of other activities leading into deep diving of the issues related to this topic from dimensions like that of policy, adoption as well as technology.

Prof Dass added, “  There will be various working groups working on each of the identified issues ultimately culminating into a report on the policy recommendations that we will be submitting to the highest levels of policy making in the country like the Prime Minister/Cabinet within 120 days of the start of the Knowledge Quest, but also reports & suggestions to various organizations on issues related to adoption of various services that they are on the offer by the end user.”

The 1st round table will act as a sequel to the FIPS Delhi conference based on the important thoughts provoked by the Knowledge Paper and also to discuss in length about encouraging practices in growing numbers from across the world to debate and come out with recommendations for all stake holders regarding Mobile Financial Services.