About

Mobile Money Advocate

I would like to welcome you to the Digital Financial Advisory Services website and blog. I started this blog to help the development community, donor organizations, governments, regulators, FinTech players, 3rd party payment service providers, financial service institutions and others to share experiences and observations about the ways in which digital financial service can be used and expanded around the world.

My name is John Owens and I am a lawyer, a development specialist, and a senior advisor and strategist who works with the financial services industry, policy makers and regulators to better understand how to develop responsible and inclusive digital financial services. I started working on use cases for digital financial services while I managed and directed the USAID-supported Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) program for Chemonics International in early 2002.

In late 2004, our team conceptualized the first use of e-money to support small banks to0 allow clients to pay their loans back via a mobile phone with a product we called Text-A-Payment which rode on the GCASH Mobile Money platform developed by Globe Telecom and its subsidiary G-Xchange Inc.

After several months of experimenting how to use mobile e-money to support greater financial inclusion, I quickly realized the power and potential of mobile e-money and this small pilot expanded in ways that I never dreamed possible. See the video Distant Access to learn more about this exciting initiative.

From the start of this adventure back in 2004, I have been fortunate to interact with, meet and visit with those involved in developing and supporting inclusive digital financial technologies. After these experiences and my over 30 years working on financial inclusion in the developing world, I have learned quite a bit about what will help to ensure responsible and inclusive digital financial services services are successfully offered and adopted.

From 2012 until the end of 2013, I had been tasked by Chemonics International to look at ways to better incorporate e-money and mobile payments into development projects from around the world. Based on my learnings, my unique position to interact with multiple players and being an active and early e-money user myself, I was encouraged by friends and colleagues to set up this blog. In mid-2013, I joined the Alliance of Financial Inclusion (AFI) as a consultant and by the beginning of 2014, I took up the full time position with AFI as their Senior Advisor on Digital Financial Services and Financial Inclusion Policies.  Since then, I have worked with and advised industry players, financial regulators and policy makers from around the world in Asia and the Pacific including China, Latin America, the Caribbean, the MENA region, Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe. The views on this blog are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employers.

If you would like to learn more about me, go to my LinkedIn profile or on my About.me profile.

You can also follow the Digital Financial Services for Development page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

To reach out for consultancy support, please feel free to contact me at digitalfinanceadvisoryservices@gmail.com