News

M3 program aids underbanked from mobile deposit to ATM withdrawal

February 28, 2013

Fraud prevention and payment solution provider Alaric has announced that it is working with on-demand mobile systems technology provider Transcel on a project sponsored by the Development Bank of Jamaica. The goal of the project is to create an infrastructure for the delivery of mobile financial services to the country's financially underserved population.

Transcel will provide MFI with mobile capabilities to enable, streamline and integrate lending, borrowing and repayment processes. The National Commercial Bank in Jamaica, a principal partner in the M3 project, will provide debit cards linked to M3 accounts. Cardholders will be able to access their money through an ATM or a merchant with a POS device.

In the Transcel M3 platform for the DBJ, all bank integration and financial transactions are implemented within Alaric's transaction processing framework. Alaric's Authentic and Fractals products will perform account opening and transaction validation checks (i.e., KYC, AML, OFAC, CFT), manage the balance of those accounts, provide authorisation of mobile transactions and synchronisation with NCB card services switch, and deliver full fraud detection and prevention functions.

Jamaica is home to a large unbanked population that has limited access to traditional financial service providers. For this reason, they typically conduct all transactions in cash, and physically store or carry their earnings or remittance receipts, leaving them vulnerable to crime.

"We are committed to bringing more citizens into the formal financial system," said Milverton Reynolds, managing director of the DBJ. "The involvement of a company such as Alaric, whose payments and transactional security products are used by some of the largest financial services companies in the world, gives us confidence that the transactions on the M3 platform will be safe and free from fraud. This will pave the way for all parties to confidently embrace the convenience and cost-effectiveness of mobile financial services."

"Mobile phones have reached such a high level of penetration (115 percent) in Jamaica that they provide the perfect vehicle to gain access to financial services," said Mike Alford, CEO at Alaric. "The initiative, started by the Development Bank of Jamaica and Transcel, incorporates learnings from other mobile money projects and has been very carefully planned to meet any possible demand.

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