David Lotfi, CEO of Evina, had the opportunity to share Evina's vision for the future of the fintech ecosystem surrounding telecom operators and revealed two secrets to the audience.
African and Middle Eastern companies and their customers are the first to grasp the importance of the first secret shared by David Lotfi: telecom operators can become the most prominent fintech players in the world today.
Telecom operators can do it because the use of bank cards is in sharp decline in favor of mobile payments. This represents a potential addressable market of $12 trillion, which explains the boom in the fintech industry, where many players, including GAFAMS, are trying to impose themselves. But the operators have the greatest assets to succeed in this market: substantial customer bases, international networks through which transactions inevitably pass, and direct access to the user's cell phone and its critical data (KYC, bank account). But that's not all: they also have one-click payment, a payment method with incredible conversion rates.
What is much less recognized, even in the most advanced markets like the Middle East and Africa, is that the battle for security is the most crucial to seizing this unique opportunity. That's the second secret shared by Evina's CEO.
For too long, mobile payment markets have been closed, especially in Europe and North America, due to compromised payment security. In Africa, cybercrime is affecting the very development of the mobile money offer: 73% of defrauded users reduce their usage of the service, and 21% no longer use it. Each fraud impacts a user and their network of friends and family. Evina's teams estimate that each defrauded user implies a significant decrease in usage for 10 of their family members and nearly 100 other users close to these family members. Instead of combating this, many telecom operators have historically preferred to avoid the fight against fraud by abandoning the payment business or implementing restrictive measures.
This approach has undermined consumer confidence in mobile payments, as their first payment need has not been met: the security of their money. It also undermined the competitiveness of mobile payment by neutralizing one of its main assets: its unbeatable ease of use.
From these two observations, Evina was born and, along with it, the fruitful strategic partnerships it has progressively forged with its telecommunication partners in the mobile payment ecosystem.
Protected by Evina, operators have been able to reconcile hypergrowth and security. They have been able to open or reopen their markets and take full advantage of the power of one-click payment. Partnerships with merchants, aggregators and telecom operators have increased direct carrier billing (DCB) revenues by 400%. At the same time, this has been accompanied by a reduction in false transactions from 40% to 1% and a halving of the overall level of complaints.
Fraud doesn't have to happen, as powerful technological solutions now exist to make cybersecurity the core of sustainable growth.
