As reported on the so-called—or better yet, the self-proclaimed—best daily newspaper on the world wide web,
Kenya have set a world first with mobile money transfers. As far as I know, mobile remittance and money transfers are old technology here in the Philippines[1] even if I still haven’t been able to use the system.
As ignorant as they may be, Guardian Unlimited’s Xan Rice and Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph expressed with enthusiasm their belief that the mobile money transfer concept is the next big thing
in mobile telephony.[2] They haven’t acknowledged the fact that this concept was originally from the Philippines with millions of workers abroad using the services of local Philippine mobile providers. I could safely say that this kind of service is an old big thing for Filipinos. I guess they think they would attract more people into believing in their services as a breakthrough this way—making its worldwide market adoption much quicker—than telling the concept came from a poor and less known country.
The report said that this new
technology is being piloted by Vodaphone with the implementation on its partially owned corporation in Kenya—claiming to be the first country in the world to use this service.
As the story shows, this M-PESA service from Safaricom is still being developed by Vodaphone, but it happens to be that Globe G-Cash™ and Smart Padala was already out of beta testing several years ago.[1]
I guess no one could deny the fact that Filipinos are not technologically lagging. We are leading with highest numbers on SMS usage, and I believe we are leading with the most services using it. So I guess we deserve some credit[3] as well, for this is so evident it would not pass even a little bit as an Agapito Flores claim to technological advances.
I guess I only have one explanation left that many other Filipinos would hately agree with: The Philippines does not exist.
Footnotes:
- a b According to Dusty, Smart and Globe was providing such services since the year 2000.
- ^ Only Joseph really said it being the
next big thing,
but Rice apparently agreed. - ^ More specifically, the Philippine wireless service providers.