Kenya to host Banking and Mobile Money conference

Kenya is set to host the sixth edition of Africa IT Exhibitions and Conferences’ (AITEC) Banking & Mobile Money COMESA meeting from March 7 to 8 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in Nairobi.

The two-day meeting, whose theme is “Showcasing the Region’s Banking and Mobile Payment Innovation Successes,” has been co-organised by COMESA Business Council, aims to address the key issues and challenges facing the region’s banking and financial services sector in the face of increasing technological innovation.

The meeting, which is ideal for IT innovators, software developers, payment aggregators and financial service providers to showcase their products and services is targeted at ICT managers and professionals in the banking and financial services sector; financial and banking industry regulators; policy-makers; telecom operators and service providers as well as non-profits involved with delivery of banking or microfinance services in rural areas.

According to the conference organizers AITEC, about 78 speakers drawn from 20 countries - including 12 non African countries - will speak on a wide range of banking topics ranging from innovation for inclusive banking, agile banking, mobile commerce, banking on the cloud and innovations in microfinance among other topics.

Sean Moroney, AITEC Africa chairman said that a key session of the conference will be on the imminent reality of monetary integration, a debate that is expected to involve participation from representatives of Central Banks of Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania.

In the main conference theatre, presentations by speakers will review trends in commercial and retail banking, innovations in banking technology and mobile money, new banking channels, products and services, among other topics.

Paynet Group’s renewal of the sponsorship effectively means that it retains for the sixth time the title of platinum sponsor’s at this top COMESA bankers’ and mobile money platform.

A recent survey indicated that even though banks were increasingly taking to infrastructure sharing, they still continued to lose hundreds of millions of shillings every year by investing unnecessarily on ATMs and devices at point of sale locations.

“The market is typified by expensive duplication of infrastructure by banks and mobile money organizations and it is becoming clear that this approach is not viable if they wish to drive down costs,” said Mr. Matthewman adding that most players are now reacting to this and are beginning to share their infrastructure and strive towards greater efficiency.

“At the heart of this is collaboration and co-operation- something we see the AITEC Banking& Mobile Money COMESA conference as helping to foster,” he said.

Internet Solutions (IS) Limited, a corporate managed internet service provider is also a Platinum Sponsor of the event which hopes to bring together more than a hundred banks and banking related institutions.