हाम्रै स्यांग्जा का हिमाल कर्माचार्य देस मै केहि गर्न चाहन्छन !

MOBILE MONEY: CEO of Kumari Bank, Radhesh Pant (right) transfers Rs 100 to Leapfrog's Himal Karmacharya to test Kumari Mobile Cash ahead of the launch of the service this week. Leapfrog partner, Ramesh Pant (centre) checks if the transaction has gone through

          Growing up in a small village in Syangja, Himal Karmacharya excelled in school. He got a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and worked for five years at Oracle. He could have stayed on like many of his peers, but decided to return to Nepal.

Karmacharya set up Leapfrog Inc. with Ramesh Pant and in collaboration with Kumari Bank, inaugurated Nepal's first phone banking project this week. "I had no doubts I'd eventually return to Nepal," Karmacharya says. "I always had this nagging guilt that I wasn't doing enough for my country. Now I have a chance."

Karmacharya's technical skills perfectly complement Ramesh Pant's marketing background, from having worked for Xerox and WIPRO. Pant is a St. Xavier's graduate, and has returned to Nepal after 52 years, taking advantage of the new facility granted to overseas Nepali investors. "We have perfect synergy with Kumari Bank," explains Pant. "It's a forward-looking bank, the first to start e-banking, and our visions are aligned."

Kumari Mobile Cash will use software developed by Leapfrog to offer banking services through cell phones to millions of Nepalis. A World Bank study shows only 20 per cent of households in Nepal are currently banking, and the bank branch and ATM penetration rate in Nepal is one of the lowest in the world.

However, mobile subscribers are growing at 36 per cent annually and by 2014 there are expected to be 14 million hand phone users, nearly half the population.

CEO of Kumari Bank, Radhesh Pant, is thrilled with the partnership. "We have been talking for years about the 80 per cent of the population outside the banking net," he says. "Kumari Mobile Cash allows us to leverage a rapidly expanding technology to bring banking services to every mobile phone user in the country."

Radhesh Pant sees phone banking as a means to remit money directly and instantaneously. The family of a migrant worker doesn't have to travel to a bank branch, women don't have to walk long distances to settle microfinance interest payments, pensioners don't have to spend two days going to towns to collect their paychecks, and parents don't have to waste time while paying school fees.

To demonstrate the ease of the facility, Radhesh Pant flips out his phone and sends Rs 100 to Himal Karmacharya's phone, which alerts him about the incoming transfer almost instantaneously. "It's very simple, and we are hoping adoption will be viral," says Karmacharya. A technical team from Kumari and Leapfrog have been working round-the-clock for 10 months to set up the software, iron out the kinks and solve teething problems. Subscribers to all three GSM networks in Nepal – NT, NCell and Hello – will be able to phone bank.

Radhesh Pant admits there will be challenges: new regulations for mobile banking have to be enacted, the bank needs to set up a nationwide network of agents, and the technology barrier among illiterate phone users has to be overcome. Leapfrog says it has a multi-layered security system. Anyone who wants to phone bank has to join the service by applying, in much the same way he or she would open a bank account. A pin code will be required for transactions, to be executed from the customer's phone.

Phone banking may sound futuristic, but the optimism of Leapfrog and Kumari stems from the experience of Kenya and Philippines, where mobile banking has taken off in a big way. Kenya's M-PESA has 7 million customers (out of a population of 38 million), barely three years into operations. Studies have shown that the income of Kenyan households using M-PESA went up by upto 30 per cent once they adopted phone banking.

Says Radhesh Pant, "Kumari Mobile Cash is a game-changer, because it piggybacks on the rapid proliferation of mobile phones to spread banking access to those who are out of reach.