Current Currencies

From those days long gone by of traders depositing gold in exchange for a certificate to the more modern Visa and Mastercard payment systems; it is clear that banking and payment systems have come a long way. No doubt as with most any technology that continues to be relevant innovation is inevitable especially with growing competition and changing markets as online technologies evolve and consumers demand more seamless alternatives for making payments and trading.

Electronic currencies are not all that new, though it would seem that we continue to see more of them being introduced into the market. In South Africa the number of electronic currencies is somewhere between 15-20. I do believe that it is time we started asking more questions about these currencies. How much is being done to protect the consumer? One of the challenges that faces this industry in South Africa is that there is currently no standard, so we find each of the various banks developing their own service in order to remain competitive, but often these currencies can not be used across the various systems. And it is not only the banks that are developing these services, other telecoms and internet companies such as BlueLabel are also producing these products.

My knowledge of this particular industry is very limited, and to be quite honest I'm not so sure that I always understand the relevance and the need for such products. It is true that in African markets where you have large numbers of unbanked people, that electronic currency can play a major role in helping to improve the lives of many individuals and families. By offering a means for a labourer who is in a mining town 200km away from his family to send money home as electronic currency in real time from his cell-phone that can be redeemed for real currency at a general dealer such as a franchise supermarket you invariably change peoples lives.

I have many questions about these products that I wish to put out there.

Since most of these are not interoperable and are generally not accepted among all merchants. How are consumers being protected from being locked in to products much like we saw people being locked into cellphone networks for the fear of loosing their phone numbers?

How secure are these currencies, as a consumer how certain can I be that the level of security around the computers that manage these currencies is matched by those that the banks would use for all their customers trading in real currency?

What governance levels are there around these technologies and how much is being done to develop a set of standards?

Do these systems not open up a gap for criminal activity and anonymous (or pseudonym)  payments of large sums of money?

I think that if anybody has answers it would be helpful for those of us who may already be using some kind of electronic currency or those of us that may consider doing so in future.

Social networks and society

The world has been taken over by the sticky web, no not the world wide web that has been around for a while now. The web of social media/social networks.

In recent months articles from all around the tech world and even the mainstream news channels all praised the role that Facebook, Twitter and the like have played in the movements that we have seen in the Arab nations of northern Africa.

On Saturday 9 July 2010 we saw the introduction of a new state the 54^th member of the African continent. South Sudan clearly faces many challenges amongst them are the splitting of revenue from the southern oilfields, poor health care and education.

So I ask the question what role can social media play in meeting the challenges that face a new born nation. Think back to South Africa 17 years ago. Had there been such well established social media platforms how would the transition been better informed or possibly hampered (considering that any one is free to publish their opinion even those that are sceptics or resistant to the change).

No doubt, these platforms are only as strong as the infrastructure that they are built upon. On a continent like Africa where broadband costs are said to be amongst the highest in the world, and where many rely on cellphones to access the internet we can clearly see that if South Sudan is to benefit from social media it will need mobile operators that can not only offer the promise of stable and affordable voice services but the same must be said of the data service.

As the democracy is established the boarders are likely to open up to volunteer and humanitarian aid groups that might have previously been disallowed or even the philanthropist that might have feared to work in a more turbulent pre-democracy Sudan.

All these groups I believe would benefit from a structured system to which they can affiliate and have access to real time information about where the greatest needs are at any point in time. The benefit of social media is that it also removes elements of bias or propaganda that might be found in your traditional news sources.

Of-course all this requires time and hard capital. Mobile operators will want to be sure that if they invest their money towards building and supporting this infrastructure they will get returns as they need to account to their shareholders. Facebook and Twitter are wonderful resources but I believe that a more dedicated platform is needed. Even with Opensource software it would require time to set up dedicated social networks, these networks can not promise to give the same relative yields as mainstream networks. There is a need for the “digital philanthropist”.

Coming Soon!

Watch this space for my weekly blog and commentary on the South African I.C.T. industry, social networking scene as well as mobile connectivity. How do all these changes affect commerce, education as well as our social lives.