海地的移动化救赎

    USAID太子港办事处的副主任史蒂夫•奥列佛曾经与比尔和梅琳达盖茨基金会（the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation）一起推动这个项目在海地的启动，他说：“移动钱包在海地的推出是一个巨大的成功。它使那些之前接触不到银行系统的人也能用上金融产品了。”

    Tcho Tcho在当地的克里奥尔语里的意思是“零花钱”的意思。最新版本的TchoTcho是在2011年的海地7.0级大地震后推出的。

    国内汇款、工资支付和基本的银行服务是Tcho Tcho占领的第一个阵地。事实很快证明，它让海地人拥有了随时随地通过手机向他人汇款的能力，而不需要用银行作为中介，因此它很快成了一款杀手级应用。而在过去，人们必须要在银行排起长队，还得支付昂贵的电汇费用，才能把现金汇给国内的家人或某个朋友。而现在，海地人最多可以通过手机支付25美元，同时只要缴纳15美分的短信费用。（为了提高使用率，Digicel允许用户每天可以免费汇款三次，每次最多汇2.5美元。）

    国内汇款已经成了海地Digicel公司最重要的一项业务，每年通过Tcho Tcho平台接收和汇出的资金达到了9.6亿美元。

    发展到现在，这项服务已经涵盖了移动缴费、定点购物等服务，而且在西联（Western Union）等中间机构的帮助下，用户很快还将可以通过手机接收海外汇款。

    不过最近一年里，TchoTcho最大的成就在于它还能够发放人道主义援助，而这个功能已经改善了好几万人的生活。它早期参与的一些项目包括美国国际开发署的“食物换和平”计划以及联合国发起的旨在帮海地人维修房屋的CARMEN项目，另外还有海地政府发起的Ti Manman Cheri项目，主要是向家里有学生的贫困妇女发放生活补助。

    这些项目中，受帮助者都获得了一部手机和一个TchoTcho账户，而且账户内每月都可以自动收到电子代金券。他们可以使用这些代金券换取食杂品和其它日用品，这样一来就避免了灾民挤爆物资配送中心或是排长队、物资被盗或被侵吞的风险。

    TchoTcho是Digicel集团旗下最先进的移动钱包解决方案，它是否会在其它国家推出呢？它是否会在全球范围内成为一种自动化提供社会救助和人道救援的新模式？夏普说：“海地是一个孵化器，我们在这里学到的经验也将会被应用到其他国家。”

    摩根大通的斯坦菲尔德认为：“一旦他们推出了一项成功的服务，Digice通常会尝试把它复制到其他市场。”

    夏普的海地妻子保拉上个月刚给他生了一个儿子，取名叫昆丁。夏普要想让TchoTcho的服务像它标志性的橙色雨伞一样在海地无所不在，就必须要把本地代理零售商网络的规模至少扩大到现在的三倍。要想在九个月里达到这个目标，对于海地这样一个充斥着不安定因素的国家来说，不知道是否太难了？

    夏普说：“Digicel是一个营销机器，我们总是能找到实现目标的方法。”（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎  

    "The fact that a mobile wallet was launched at all in Haiti is a huge success," says Steve Olive, deputy director of USAID's Port-au-Prince office, who helped jumpstart the initiative along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "It's making financial products available to people who were previously outside the banking system."

    The latest version of TchoTcho -- which means "pocket money" in the local Creole dialect -- was launched in 2011 in the wake of the devastation surrounding the 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

    Domestic money transfers, payroll, and basic banking services were first to go live. It immediately became apparent that giving Haitians the ability to instantly transfer money from one mobile phone to another -- anywhere in the country without a banking intermediary -- was a killer app. Whereas before, people had to endure long bank lines and pay for expensive wire transfers to send cash from the city to family or a friend in the country, Haitians could now remit up to $25 with a few simple text commands for just 15 cents. (To boost adoption rates, Digicel allows customers to transfer up to $2.50 three times a day for free.)

    Domestic transfers have become a huge hit for Digicel Haiti, with $960 million being sent and received each year on the TchoTcho platform.

    The service has since expanded to include mobile bill-payment and point-of-sale purchases and will soon allow customers to receive international remittances on their handsets, bypassing middlemen such as Western Union.

    But it's the ability to distribute humanitarian aid that is perhaps TchoTcho 's biggest accomplishment of the last 12 months because it is has already changed tens of thousands of lives. The USAID's Food for Peace and the UN's CARMEN program for housing repair are among the early adopters, along with the Haitian government's Ti Manman Cheri, which pays a monthly stipend to poor women who keep their children in school.

    In all cases recipients are provided with a mobile phone and a TchoTcho account so they can automatically receive monthly e-vouchers that they redeem for groceries or other supplies, circumventing distribution centers, long lines, and risk of theft or misappropriation. "E-vouchers keep things much tighter because you can track how aid is spent," says Karl O'Conner, a Dubliner in charge of special projects. "If you distribute cash, there are no guarantees."

    Will TchoTcho, Digicel Group's most advanced mobile-wallet solution to date, be rolled out in other countries where it does business? And could it become the model for the automated distribution of social and humanitarian aid worldwide? "Haiti is an incubator," says Sharpe. "What we learn here will be used in other countries."

    Says J.P. Morgan's Steinfeld: "Once they introduce a successful service, Digicel Group will usually try to replicate it in other markets."

    In the meantime Sharpe, whose Haitian wife Paula last month gave birth to son Quentin, has to figure out how to expand his network of agent retailers by a factor of at least three. That's what it will take if TchoTcho is to become as ubiquitous as the orange Digicel umbrellas that protect company reps selling airtime from the hot Port-au-Prince sun. Is that too big a mountain to climb in nine short months in a country with few sure bets?

    "Digicel is a marketing machine," says Sharpe. "We always find a way to get where we need to be."