The importance of mobile money inter-connectivity between different mobile service providers in Rwanda.

(This is to be continued through deeper research. This is purely my thoughts, not backed up by facts.)

While in Rwanda, I of course needed a local sim card for calls and the Internet. Someone suggested that I use Airtel since it had a better product-price ratio. For a quick catch-up, a lot of payments are now made through mobile money. If you are using cash and you need change, there is a high probability that the service provider won't have cash on hand.

So fast-forward, I took a moto ride, enjoyed it, but upon payment, I was told he only used MTN's mobile money and it comes as no surprise that I had all my money on Airtel's mobile money. That was a bummer since I had to call a friend I was meeting up with to process the payment.

Well, I had already started using the Airtel number for calls and was not about to get another MTN sim card for just 3 months. I borrowed a small phone strictly for mobile money payments from our housekeeper to use during my stay.

So how is mobile money inter-connectivity between different providers important?

• Market competition and Innovation: As consumers, it is always better to have options and with options comes the ultimate consumer choice. A company's sales growth always comes back to if the consumers choose their products or not. This drives to improve service quality, better pricing, reliability and customer-centered designs among other things. A happy customer is a loyal customer right?

• Financial inclusion: Many people rely on mobile money transactions because of limited access to the internet, traditional banking services, use of POS machines, etc. With the introduction of mobile money interconnectivity, customers can send or receive money without having to worry about which service provider either them or the business uses. This will be convenient and also ease giving or receiving services.

• Economic growth: Interconnectivity in mobile money services will mostly eliminate unnecessary transaction costs that mostly fall back on the customer, enable business to expand their reach and also cut additional fees that might have acted as barriers to their service provision. This will positively impact business operations which encourage entrepreneurship and hence economic growth.

While I understand that different policies, regulations and technologies are needed to put this in order, mobile money interconnectivity in different mobile service providers is crucial for the efficiency and dynamic financial ecosystem especially for a country like Rwanda that is on its way to social-economic growth.