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Goals

• Tools to enable far-reaching field operations in remote areas including mobile, tablet, and offline devices. Integrate Mifos with mobile money platforms so data can be synchronized with the disbursements, repayments, and deposits being initiated through the mobile money platform.
• It can enable financial institutions to go completely paperless once mobile money is rolled out and integrated with the core banking system.

Background and strategic fit

Many of our customers work in rural and outlying regions and need their field operations staff to be connected to their clients and their data at all times. They need access to data on and offline and to have the full power of Mifos X in their mobile devices so they can reduce the costs of serving their clients. 

Assumptions

• For smartphones and tablets, we will primarily design and build for the Android operating system given the ubiquity of the platform, low cost of devices and extensibility of the platform.
• Ability for data collection needs to be available on and offline - while connectivity is rapidly expanding, many of our customers still require offline data entry
• Offline data entry will be centered around mobile devices but our customers still require browser-based solutions for offline data capture. 
• Mobile financial services is separate from mobile field operations and is a separate topic
• Mobile field operations is focused on the operational staff of the financial institution and is separate from mobile banking which is client-facing. 

Mobile Money is in high demand across Mifos users worldwide yet it still has not been as widely adopted by our customer base because of the need for access to Open APIs from the mobile money providers and hence our ability to integrate with their mobile money systems.

Integration from a technical standpoint once the API is made available from the mobile money provider isn't a large amount of work but getting the specific use cases and requirements needed for mobile money integration is critical and we can only move forward if users and partners in the community express the specific requirements they have. Musoni Services has integrated with various mobile money providers throughout Sub-Saharan Africa via Musoni System which is built on top of the Mifos X platform

The following provides good background on mobile money integration:

• CGAP on Open APIs - http://www.cgap.org/blog/can-open-apis-accelerate-digital-finance-ecosystem
  • http://www.cgap.org/blog/partnership-missing-ingredient-mobile-money-apis
• Safaricom M-Pesa API Guide & Documentation: http://www.safaricom.co.ke/business/m-pesa/api
• Specs for Mifos 2 Mobile Money Integration (File-Level API integration for M-Pesa)
  • MPESA Loan Repayments and Savings Deposits Functional Spec v2
  • MPESA Loan Disbursals Functional Spec
• Mobile Money Providers by Region (spreadsheet research led by GCI students)
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j1YPXP_Cy1g8YTIjnAXBflGYdPRiug7MlWlw8Zhky8I/edit?usp=sharing
• Notes from on M-Pesa Requirements
  • /wiki/spaces/~dharp@harpcreek.com/pages/90898481
  • M-PESA Process.docx

Assumptions

• Requirements must be driven by implementation by a specific customer or partner
• Preference is to do API-level integration if available, will only do file-level integration if that is the option. 

Customers

Requirements

User interaction and design

Questions

Below is a list of questions to be addressed as a result of this requirements document:

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