Book: The March Of Mobile Money

There is probably no better time to read about a book on mobile money than now. More people have a mobile phone than any time before. 3G is expected soon. On September 15, 2010, RBI granted a license to Airtel, allowing the telecom company to offer cash card services to its customers. Its customers can pay cash to load their wallet from a retail outlet, and use it to make payments.

In fact, if you want to buy a book on mobile money, you can just wave your handset at a Landmark bookstore instead of swiping your credit card (if you are a Vodafone/Citi customer and possess a particular type of mobile phone.)

The question however is, should that book be The March of Mobile Money: The Future of Lifestyle Management by Sam Pitroda and Mehul Desai? Sam Pitroda is a well known name in India, credited with starting India’s telecom revolution. He was the chairman of the country’s National Knowledge Commission between 2005 and 2009 and now advises the prime minister on public information infrastructure and innovations. And, as he never tires of reminding you in this book, he also came up with the idea of digital wallet back in 1994 and got a patent for it two years later. But please keep these three things in mind before you wave your mobile phone at a book store.

Don’t get too carried away by the title or preface: The title says Future of Lifestyle Management. The preface suggests that the book “[is] about “the inner working of transaction industry — the role of big business lobbies, vested interests, money, power...” The book has none of this drama. Rather, it’s an intelligent and thoughtful compilation of trends in telecom, banking and retail all of which have brought mobile money to an inflection point.

Don’t expect a reporter’s account: The book derives its strength from the authors’ expertise in the area (co-author Desai is the CEO of C-SAM which provides technology for mobile commerce and mobile payments). That expertise shows, especially in the way they have captured the evolution of banks, telecoms and merchants, and in the way they map out the future of money (in chapter 10, which is probably the most insightful part of the book). But that is also a limitation. Often, the book reads like a white paper. You almost get a feeling that the structure and the ideas jumped out of a power point presentation. There are no voices, there is no colour.

Don’t expect to find all the answers: The book is not without insights. The authors rightly note that few providers have approached mobile money from the customers’ angle. Mobile transactions are complex, and don’t have the intuitive appeal of their proposal: A digital wallet which looks and functions like a leather wallet, except that everything is in bytes.

But, there are also obvious gaps, and some leaps in logic. For example, the entire African experience in mobile money gets dismissed in a sentence. The authors talk about easier movement of mobile money across international borders, without explaining how mobile money is any different from what is done over Internet today.

If you have an interview with an m-commerce start up tomorrow, this might be a right book to pick up. It gives you a good overview. Otherwise, wait for a better book to hit the market.