amaana enters World Challenge 08

amaana has entered World Challenge 08 , which is a global competition aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level.

Here are the answers to the 5 questions that distinguish amaana from other candidates:

Why was the project initiated and what does it aim to achieve?

This project was established keeping in mind the millions of un-banked people in Pakistan, lacking any access to affordable financial services. Through the course of rolling the product into the market, amaana aims to provide financial options for the low-income market by enabling micro payments via mobile phones at a significantly lower cost than existing financial channels such as banks and money transfer agents

How does the project measure its achievements?

We look at usage patterns starting with our airtime feature for prepaid purchases over SMS to any mobile phone. For outreach we see how virally the service has spread by word of mouth or referrals in any given community in the country. For usage we look at overall traffic and volume for any particular user. These power users represent their communities, or trust networks, and become amaana's evangelists by promoting us locally. amaana finds particular pleasure in noticing how apparently illiterate people can memorize roman SMS commands or numeric shortcuts to use our basic services

How does the project benefit the community and/or environment?

By providing services over their existing mobile devices at no additional cost, amaana increases each users own income-value by reducing costs typically associated with existing financial services available to them. Accepting amaana as a payment option induces the growth of cash-less economies. This substantially provides economic growth opportunities to the community at large by increasing efficiency, reducing currency printing costs, theft, and sabotage

How does the project use environmental resources sustainably?

We enable cashless economies, which in turn enable paperless environments. Taking physical aspects out of any system increase the inherent security and cost effectiveness of that system. The State Bank of Pakistan has started issuing cotton based currency for it to circulate longer, but that only increases the capital expenditure of producing currency and bank notes continues to transport disease. Our real time over the air processes eliminate time and cost related to physical documentation and transport.


Please write in no more that 250 words why you think this project deserves to win World Challenge 08

We live in a world today with a population of approximately 6.7 billion people, the majority of whom are below the poverty belt. Where, once the world feared Hitler and Communism, headlines now turn to Islamist groups spreading fear throughout the world. With so much diversity in our history, there has been little to rejoice. Pakistan embodies a mere 2% of the global population, yet we have managed to attract attention from the other 98% for nearly a decade. Acts of violence and extremist slander have brought social sanctions home. However, despite the circumstances, life goes on. Part of the life being exposed here is the kind that incubates passion in ones struggle for improving the lives around you. With such passion come situations where the youth that once sought to find success and opportunity elsewhere, are now finding solace in bringing the better wisdom of the world home. One such wisdom is the idea that one day, a company such as amaana, might become a part of the greater solution to challenging economic disparities and social persecution. amaana prides itself in the insistence that everyone should be entitled to flourish. Leveraging the incalculable benefits of modern technology, amaana provides access to financial services over even a basic mobile phone to the poorest man, woman or child, exposing them to prosperity. amaana's low-cost technology platform turns mobile phones into powerful keys that can open doors to change. With consistent resilience and determination, perhaps amaana can fill such big shoes.