I recently read a cool article on the progress of mobile money in the Philippines. (Read here). It was full of quotes on the size of the market, the penetration, volumes etc. And what was good about it, was that it was explicit about this, given clear numbers. Some of the measurements referenced were:- The addressable market is 70 million out of a population of 90 million
- Monthly value of P5 billion (US$ 115 million) is processed on Globe and P13 billion (US$ 300 million) on Smart.
- More than 18 000 outlets (agents, merchants?)
- Smart now have 8.5 million subscribers
These numbers are impressive, but I wanted to get a feel for growth, usage, profitability and efficiency and felt that the metrics (and the numbers) just scratch the surface. What about looking at metrics like average transaction value, money retained per subscriber, volume transacted by subscriber by month or cost/revenue per subscriber or per transaction. Also what was it like one year ago and how ill it look in a years time? Things like this would have told me more about the service and how well it is doing (or will be doing).
As we get to know the industry better, should we not develop commonly acceptable metrics that we can share to evaluate how well we are doing?