RE:FGD interviewI think the key high light of the interview is: James West: Okay. So what makes your platform equal to, or better than, for example, say, Apple Pay or Google Pay? Or is it on that same sort of scale?
Andre Itwaru: Well, Apple Pay and Google Pay are consumer-facing brands. They’re global brands that are very powerful. So I mean, there is not a comparison when it comes to the recognition of their brands versus ours. Our strategy is very different, though. I mean, for an Apple Pay and a Google Pay, most of those payments services are backed up by a credit card, so consumers that use those services would have to be consumers that are banked, that have credit cards. We have to remember that the vast majority of the population out there don’t have credit cards and banking facilities. So our services cater to those demographics. That’s one of the major differentiators with us versus those organizations.
* (Catering to essentially people without sufficient funds who own cell phones, doesn't make too much sense to me. If i didn't have money I wouln't be using my cell phone and being charged a fee to make a transaction everytime. I would use cash. where there is no fee.)
James West: Right. So the other impressive component of this whole value proposition for investors that really caught my attention was this idea of the revenue per user model, and you seem to have within your sights a revenue per user model that is better than Facebook’s. Maybe you could elaborate on that for me.
Andre Itwaru: So we have right now, we believe, if you look at the mobile app, there are a number of different services, six to nine services, depending on the deployment. In India, for example, there are nine services that are available. So our focus really is to drive revenue on a per-usage basis, or a per-click basis. So when we look at the mobile app, the probability of someone topping up a mobile phone, paying a bill, booking travel or sending money, etcetera, in some instances in places like India, the probability is high. In the deployment in Ethiopia with the telecom company, the probability is high that people are going to be tapping on the phone to do mobile top-ups. So it’s all about consumers driving and clicking on a per-transaction basis. Our focus really is to drive multiple transactions from the consumers that we have on board right now. Our model calls for about a $280 per user on an annual basis of revenue. That’s kind of how our formula works, and that’s what we expect to achieve. We’ve seen these numbers already being achieved in our deployment.
* (India's per capita income (nominal) was $1670 in 2016, ranked at 112th out of 164 countries by the World Bank,[1] while its per capita income on purchasing power parity (PPP) basis was US$5,350, and ranked 106th. - Wikipedia) - If your income was $1670 per year would you spend $280 per year in transactions? Probably not, Catering to the low incomers in this way will not work, they are scratching every penny to save money, not spending money on transactions like the westerners who wants convinience and to save time, the low incomers have lots of time and no money.