Telepin M&S Interview – Full Version from Telepin Software Systems on Vimeo.

Transcript

Michael Greenwood (Research Analyst, Juniper Research): Could you tell us about Telepin, your journey, and how the company has evolved over the years?

Eric Feeley (CEO, Telepin): Certainly! Telepin provides a mobile money platform. We specialize in innovative mobile financial services to address the needs of the underbanked. Think of people without access to a bank account or credit card. How are then they’re able to save money, meet merchant payments, bill payments, money transfers, even international remittance all using their mobile phone. This raises their standard of living. My journey with television has been long and exciting. I joined the company over 16 years ago, about 10 years ago I’d helped guide the company through the pivot from a what was mostly an airtime focused platform into the emerging mobile financial service industry. Over those years, I’ve had the privilege of working with alongside some of the most talented and dedicated people that have helped bring televisions evolution from a small, promising player into a true industry leader. We’ve expanded our product offering we’ve refined our technology, and we’ve established global partnerships. This has allowed us to deliver a truly best in class solution.

MG: Brilliant. I will take this opportunity to congratulate you on your Platinum Award for Juniper’s Future Digital Awards for Mobile Money. Could you share more details about the award winning solution?

EF: Thank you. Yes, we’re incredibly honored to receive this award from Juniper. For a Mobile Money Wallet Platform. I feel what distinguishes television in the marketplace is our focus. Unlike some of the general technology vendors in the mobile operators space and offer a “me too product” in their vast catalog of technology. Telepin is more focused as a boutique vendor, this is our only market this is early product. So that remains our focus. And that means our staff at Telepin are able to concentrate and to innovate in that space. At the core of that is our commitment to principles of security, scalability, user-centric design. We know that in mobile financial services, there’s not a one size fits all type mobile money platform, you need to be part of a larger ecosystem. And because of that, we’ve learned to listen and learn from each one of our markets to find out what makes them unique, and ensure that we can address those needs quickly and seamlessly. From what telephony has been able to offer and provide those valuable insights to support other markets. And this has given us a solid track record of success. Some of our competitors typically offer rigid, ready-made solutions or expensive custom-build options. Telepin offers a single mobile money platform that can be reconfigured to address those needs.

MG: Can you provide some real-world examples, or use cases where Telepin solutions have made a substantial impact?

EF: Of course, what would be considered Telepin’s ideal customer it would be Singtel in the Asia Pacific market in Singapore. That platform is targeted towards foreign workers that might not be able to get a local bank account in that country. Televisions deployment there consists of both a mobile domestic wallet platform with integrations to Visa and MasterCard so they can tap gold from any of the convenience stores. But its real focus is an international remittance platform, a complete IMT platform that allows workers to send money directly home to their relatives without paying the high fees associated with the traditional vendors in that space. This addresses the need of those workers and helps them achieve financial independence. We also provide, of course, a large number of platforms throughout Africa, the largest being Tigo Pesa in Tanzania. They’re what started as a remittance product has expanded over the years to become a full fledged financial service provider. They have multiple products ranging from micro loans, savings, insurance, and Telepin has been proud to work closely with the Tigo Pesa team to bring those innovations to Tanzania market. They have over 10 million customers on our platform and over 250,000 merchants and agents. But we also know that there are smaller countries and smaller players that have similar but different needs. For example, we have a platform in Belize a country of less than half a million population. Where we’ve deployed on Amazon AWS, it provides an affordable way of deploying that technology of reaching the rural unbanked and that we’ve done with additional small pilot projects in partnership with people like UNICEF and even the National Lottery Corporation there.

MG: So, what do you see as the key trends in the mobile money wallets industry?

EF: Well, some of the prevailing trends, the acceleration of financial inclusion, like I said, the affordable cross border transactions, something we’ve been working with the Mojaloop Project for quite some years, there’s always advances in biometric authentication, cryptocurrency integration, and open wallet ecosystems. I think of those, the trend that we’re most focused on is an open wallet ecosystem that drives third party developers to be able to access the platform that allows them to create their own value and services unique to their market that addresses their own needs.

MG: And how do you see this reflected in Telepin’s mobile money wallet offering?

EF: Telepin’s, mobile wallet offering aligns really well with those trends. We offer a large number of flexible, rich API’s that allow modular components to be added and integrated. And this empowers the the customers and the customization, to create new functionalities to put the pieces back together again, in a different order to address a need unique to that market. We’re committed to continue to adapt and and tailor this configuration to ensure that in that sort of competitive, rapidly evolving mobile landscape of payments in those countries, that our customers are able to offer something that’s relevant to the users.

MG: So, looking forward to the future, what part of Telepin’s mobile world offering are you most excited about? And why?

EF: I mean, Telepin is always developing new modules that are focused on enabling financial access to the unbanked to ensure that we’re able to use those emerging technologies. Of course, the current hot topic now in 2024, is the acceleration in artificial intelligence, AI, and its potential impact for the data and trend analysis in a platform like ours. That said, Telepin’s real focus, I think has to remain to do with security. There’s been such a large number of data breaches historically, and Telepin, sitting on some very secure financial data, we remain committed to ensuring that we advance our security, our authentication and authorization mechanism that ensures that the convenience of digital payments is not compromised by their access and security. We remain committed to you know, a globally connected digital payment future that is meeting the needs of the customers that’s rapidly evolving this landscape, but still ensuring that they’re able to do so safely and securely.