We need to understand the target audience, our potential customer base, while huge is not technologically sophisticated. That's no doubt true of many of our individual MASS SPECC collaborators too. I think that was the point of Chris Kain's anecdote from the MASS SPECC General Assembly:
I was up there recently only a couple of weeks ago and we were at the 50th General Assembly of MASS SPECC where we were front and centre as the commercial and technical partner. There were over a thousand delegates in the room. It was quite interesting talking to some of the individuals in the room who - and one that stuck in my mind particularly was one particular lady who was over 60 years of age. She was a MASS SPECC employee actually. She had just been introduced to the Pinoy Coop Mobile App, first mobile app she’d ever used. The first time she'd ever interacted with a mobile app …and she couldn't believe that she could check the balance of her ATM account on her mobile phone so she knew how much money she had in her ATM account, as opposed to having to go to an ATM and check the balance at the ATM. So she said it was amazing - it saved her so much time, it gave her so much comfort. But that was her first interaction.
So this is something that we need to understand. This is what we're on the precipice of. You know, across the whole of the Philippines there’s more than something in the order of 15 million members of 9,000-odd individual cooperatives across the whole of the Philippines. MASS SPECC does have a vision to try and unify all those co-ops and provide digital financial inclusion, digital financial services. And we’re front and centre as the technology and commercial partner with these guys.
I'm not at all surprised that MS is still training staff and continuing the roll-out. This thing will grow organically - and perhaps even refreshingly worthily, yes, to become the equivalent of the Grameen Bank in the Philippines.
