How can the
Asaan Mobile Account
change Pakistan?
Pakistan has a huge unbanked population. What will the AMA do to change that? By Taimoor Hassan
O
n December 13, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) launched the Asaan Mobile Account (AMA) scheme at the central bank’s headquarters in Karachi. Those in attendance were the governor and deputy governor of the State Bank, CEOs of some of the largest banks in Pakistan, chairmen of the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), officials from Virtual Remittance Gateway (VRG) and other officials from central bank. The launch comes after a long and uneven ride for AMA and the parties involved, with unwanted delays in the launching of the scheme, wilted faces of some of the participants of the scheme and uneasy interactions. But this discourse is not about delays, wilted faces or uneasy interactions. It is rather about
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the scheme and what it holds for Pakistan. The scheme is the embodiment of a rare cooperation between commercial banks, mobile network operators or telcos like Mobilink and Telenor, and a young fintech company, VRG, which is at the centre of making this cooperation possible. The scheme is finally here, with ambitious targets of banking a massively unbanked population and a promise that if this population is banked, it can change the destiny of the entire nation.
Why is AMA the best bet to bank the unbanked?
T
he idea of AMA is to get banking services to the unbanked population on a USSD-based channel so that it can eliminate the need for the inter-
net. The USSD code system is one most mobile phone customers are familiar with. Each time they use a prepaid card to load more money into their mobile balances, they are using a USSD code to conduct that transaction (that *786 or *123 or similar code followed by the scratch card code that you use is called a USSD code). In turn, it is expected to boost financial inclusion which comes with its own prize for the economy. Talk to bankers and they will tell you how they avoid interacting with low-income people, say some shepherd in a village, and even deny them entry at a bank branch. These customers can create an image problem for the bank and its wealthy customers would feel uncomfortable with their presence at a bank branch. Banks also consider these customers hard to work with because of low literacy among such segments, and banks have long considered these segments a bad business case since the cost of serving these
