By Emmanuel Elebeke

ERICSSON has commenced preparations for a seamless adoption of m-commerce in Nigeria. To create the awareness, the company  hosted a global stakeholder engagement roundtable in Lagos for leaders from the banking, financial, telecoms and government sectors of the country.

The focus of the gathering was to explore opportunities across the eco-system for accelerating the adoption of next generation M-commerce in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Country Manager, Ericsson Nigeria, Kamar Abass, who described the event as a boost to the initiative, said that it will be beneficial to other industry sectors like the banking, retail and utilities sectors.

According to Abass, all sectors stand to benefit from the transformational efficiency and productivity gains made accessible by the new application.

The round table follows the release of a new report from Ericsson’s ConsumerLab, which gives a hint to the transformational potentials of  m-commerce across the region.

The report which based its findings on in-depth,  and extensive interviews with mobile phone users in Ghana, South Africa, and Tanzania, has four key findings: that consumers are constantly looking for new ways to improve their personal budgets; the speed and convenience of m-commerce points to great potential in the market; current behaviors and social structures indicate that the use of mobile payment services will expand; and that consumers need more information about the functionality and security of M-commerce transactions.

Mobile payment services
According to the Ericsson report, consumers said that they use mobile payment services for person-to-person transfers and purchasing airtime on their mobile subscriptions, and that they like the convenience of accessing money everywhere and at any time, regardless of service hours. In Tanzania, for example, 38% of subscribers send money person-to-person over the mobile phone.

Another conclusion of the report is that people who use m-commerce keep little separation between private and business accounts.

The Senior Advisor, Ericsson ConsumerLab, Anders Erlandsson said that many consumers were entirely self-employed and are prompted to make transfers from private accounts for business purposes, so they gain experience with m-commerce.

Citing his experience of the study, Erlandsson said that experience leads to greater trust as the report found that 44% of non-users of m-commerce are very worried about the integrity of their account information in case of theft or loss of their phones.

“Just as personal access to a bank leads to higher acceptance of more abstract bank services, trust in mobile services also grows with personal experiences, “Face-to-face introductions are crucial, when an agent meets consumer, he added.

The report gives some insight into how household finances are traditionally handled and guidance for telecom operators in launching services that consumers will like and use. Where men and women share a household, men are generally expected to be breadwinners and women responsible for household finances.

In the report, a 45-year old man in Tanzania said “If we are out of money and we have to buy something, my wife usually solves it somehow. I don’t know how she does it, women always have their ways.”