Recently, I found myself in a room with Charles Sirois, Chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) on the future of banking. His message: Mobile is the future for banking. Here’s and example of why?

Kenya is a world leader in mobile money. As a result, Kenya is to mobile money what Silicon Valley is to software due to a little service called M-PESA which has emerged, for all intents and purposes, as new currency along side the Kenyan shilling (KSH).

M-PESA was launched in 2006 by Safaricom, Vodafone’s subsidiary in East Africa. The service allows customers to transfer phone credit wirelessly through SMS. The M-PESA is equal to the KSH and is exchanged for cash in special locations across the country.

It’s revolutionary for a number of reasons.

With 6 million plus users, M-PESA allows mobile customers to store cash value on their mobile phone, exchange cash with anyone via SMS and cash out without the involvement of any bank or the need for a bank account. Although there are no fees for holding an account, customers pay a small fee for every transaction.

What started out as a micro-finance platform is now a full-on currency in Kenya. Image this… You own a coffee kiosk in Nairobi. Your customers buy your fabulous coffee by completing an M-PESA transfer to you – on the spot – via SMS. You no longer have to carry shillings only to put them under the mattress or have your money stolen, because, carrying cash is simply too dangerous! In the unfortunate situation you do get robbed, you know the account you transferred your money to because you’ve got his/her phone number!

Almost four years after the launch of M-PESA, people are not only paying each-other with their mobile phone, but they’re asking to be paid salary in M-PESA. So image, now Vodofone, a relatively unregulated mobile company finds itself with more cash on-hand than all the Kenyan banks combined.

Curiously, only yesterday an interesting development for M-PESA made the news: M-Pesa to get Sh384m from Bill Gates charity Why a charity would be funding Vodafone’s most profitable pay-per-use service remains to be seen.

In Canada, a more recent mobile money start-up is Enstream, which is a mobile money play and collaboration of the major mobile carriers. After 100 million dollars (rumored)  investment, Zoompass hasn’t recognized much adoption.

“Zoompass is a unique mobile person-to-person money transfer service that uses a stored value account to send/receive/request money quickly and securely for all 21 million mobile phone users on the Bell, Fido, PC Mobile, Rogers, Solo Mobile, or TELUS networks.”

Personally, I look forward to ending the hunt for coins to ride the TTC or reading a novel at the parking meter as it takes forever to authorize my Visa,  but really, it might be more about reversing the ubiquity of credit cards in Canada before similar mobile innovations will be in reach for Canuks.

Among the spectacular-ness of gestural is a way of navigating data (as seen in Minority Report). Here you can take tabular data and apply it to geo-spacial information so the data can be understood and made meaningful. The collaborative design work demonstrated is also amazing.

To paraphrase Underkoffler regarding his inspiration: We create and our technology is a combination of design and efficacy that allows us to do that.

• Travel industry hit with the biggest drop in online purchasing by 6%, non-travel online economy dropped 1%
• Sales trends through the third quarter of 09 mirror last year and show no growth
• All income segments showing declines in e-commerce spending, however the 18-44 age group is purchasing more versus year ago, particularly in the high income segment (+10%)
• The impact of higher consumer debt means consumers have less ability to spend on discretionary items
• Unemployment/job security continues to be a top concern among all consumers (less of an issue in Canada so we may benefit from more discretionary spending)
• The Books & Magazines category was a top performer in Q3 ’09, and will be one to watch as we head into the holiday season, followed by Consumer Electronics and Sports & Fitness (marginally up)
• Consumers buy online from 1 – 3 trusted websites (up YoY by ~2 sites)
• Pure play sites accounted for nearly six of every ten e-commerce dollars spent in Q3 2009, their highest share on record
• Invitation-only e-luxury sites are flourishing
• PayPal B2C Market Share has grown steadily over the past four years to almost 10% of B2C Transactions; 2008 Holiday-promotions drove an increase in PayPal dollar share for retailers
• Coupon sites continue to grow in importance during these tough economic times, and as we saw in Q4 2008 we‟ll likely see visits and UVs spike in Q4 2009
• Savvy Smartphone users are shopping using mobile (no real numbers available)
• Sites offering free shipping will see greatest lift in online conversion
• Busiest online shopping day of the year will be Dec 14, 2009

Dear reader, if you come across the same type of data for Canada, please comment.

Thanks comScore!

I’ve been doing a number of Youth Marketing consulting projects since I launched www.virginmobile.ca and continue to seek out youth related research.

Recently, I came across a rare find of fabulous free research. Researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley carried out a three (3) year study to gain insights into how U.S. teenagers use digital media. To learn more, you can download the free report here digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu

The key learning for Digital Marketers is that youth expect to interact with brands the same way they interact with their friends online. In effect, digital marketers need to understand the role of technology in establishing, reinforcing, complicating, and damaging friendship-driven social bonds in youth’s everyday lives to understand how youth audiences want to connect and communicate with brands online.

No surprise that for many contemporary U.S. teenagers, losing access to social media is tantamount to losing their social world. Just as GenXers had done in parking lots and shopping malls, teens gather in networked public spaces for a variety of purposes, including to negotiate identity, gossip, support one another, jockey for status, collaborate, share information, flirt, joke, and goof around. In other words, they go there to “hang out.”

Although the specific Social Media tools vary by geography, time, and peer group – Social Media tools mediated interactions. In other words, Social Media allow teens to extend their interactions beyond physical boundaries. Conversations and interactions that begin in person do not end when friends are separated. Youth complement private communication through messaging and mobile phones with social media that support broader peer publics.

After first outlining a historical and conceptual framework for understanding teen peer-based friendship, the report also examines how social media intersect with four types of everyday peer negotiations: making friends, performing friendships, articulating friendship hierarchies, and navigating issues of status, attention, and drama. In all of these cases, we consider how the unique affordances of contemporary networked publics are inflecting existing peer learning, sharing, and sociability in new ways.

The “Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures” is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley.

To learn more, you can download the report here digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu

For additional Youth related research I recommend Pew Research people-press.org and Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital blog www.grownupdigital.com.

“Online activity in 2008 largely reflected the economic crisis and the U.S. presidential election. Job Search ranked as the top-gaining site category for 2008, growing 51 percent to nearly 19 million visitors in December, as Americans turned to the Internet to seek new career opportunities after significant job losses were incurred during the second half of the year. Category leader, CareerBuilder.com jumped 78 percent to 9.1 million visitors.”

“As signs of an economic recession continued to manifest themselves in the form of collapsing banks, rising home foreclosures, and increasing job layoffs, consumers became increasingly cost-conscious and sought ways online to curb their spending. Coupon sites witnessed a 46-percent increase during the year, reaching more than 31.5 million Americans in December. Classifieds also saw a sharp increase in traffic, growing 27 percent to 52.8 million visitors, as Americans attempted to save and make money through the purchase and sale of used items. Category leader Craigslist grew 51 percent during the year.”

For more, you can get the free report here.