Mobile financial services forum on at Terra Nova

THE BENEFITS of mobile financial services and their long-term impact on Jamaican commerce will be the focus of a one-day conference on Friday at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel in New Kingston.

Finance Minister Audley Shaw heads the list of speakers scheduled for the mobile financial services conference, which is a joint promotion between the University of the West Indies' (UWI) Mona School of Business (MSB) and Solutions for Society, a subsidiary of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute (TMRI).

During a press briefing at the UWI yesterday, Professor Evan Duggan of MSB said representatives of the banking, telecommunications, private and public sectors are expected to attend the conference.

He said a regulatory system and examination of various mobile financial services models are among the issues on the agenda. Stakeholders will ultimately decide which is the most suit-able format for Jamaica.

Duggan said MSB and TMRI conceived the conference in July.

The two entities have agreed that the partici-pation of the local commercial sector was significant to an effective mobile financial services network in Jamaica, especially with its potential impact on remittances, a critical contributor to the country's economy.

"At the end of the day, it will require the full support of all," Duggan told The Gleaner.

Several persons who have played key roles in the emergence of mobile commerce internationally are scheduled to address the conference. They include Carl Johan Rosenquist, a strategic business and information technology consultant from Cyprus; Dr Dawn Elliott, lecturer in economics at Texas Christian University; and Meneske Gencer, CEO of mPay Connect Inc, an American consultant company which counts organisations such as Wells Fargo and the Inter-American Development Bank as clients.

Professor Hopeton Dunn of MSB and Hugo Daley, CEO of Transcel Limited, are among the Jamaican speakers.

Mobile financial services took off internationally with the cellular-phone boom of the 1990s.

Mobile-phone companies such as Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia have formed partnerships with major telecoms carriers like AT&T and Sprint to provide a variety of services to clients, which range from email to bill payments.