AIM grad finds micro-financing future in mobile commerce By Erwin Lemuel Oliva (June 26, 2005) Excerpts from Inq7.net:
FROM a sophisticated and convenient communications device to a tool for broadcasting jokes and protest against government, the ubiquitous mobile phone is slowly turning into an electronic means to dispense cash, an e-wallet in short.
A Filipino graduate of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) business school recently found, however, not just one but 27 more ingenious applications for mobile commerce when he conducted a pilot study with a local non-government organization. Think micro-financing.
Currently as a development consultant on information and communications technology for AIM, 30-year old Edwin Soriano has drawn up several business models to ride on existing mobile commerce innovations like Globe Telecom’s G-cash and Smart Communications’s Smart Money.
For the pilot study he conducted with the non-government organization Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (Card-NGO), Soriano experimented with his business concepts using G-cash. Card-NGO is currently one of the biggest non-government organizations involved in micro-financing in the Philippines.
