International mobile and technology community, MoCo Moments, hosted its first Johannesburg meet-up yesterday. The meet-ups bring together people working within the mobile business space to hear from industry leaders and network.
Keynote speakers included Jamie Whittaker from Discovery Health, Elias Sikazwe from Snapscan, and Dinesh Patel from OrderIn.
MoCo Moments has already held events in Brussels, Cape Town, London and Paris. It launched in 2015 and was founded by Dutch mobile services company CM Telecom. The MoCo community was set up in 2010 by CM to share know-how and stimulate cross-pollination among industry professionals.
CM Telecom SA country manager James Bayhack said: "Without question, mobile is the future, so for me, MoCo is the perfect environment to start conversations and thought leadership."
Whittaker's presentation looked at the opportunity and risks of the Internet of things (IOT). He said there are a lot of IOT devices that people use every day that they are not even aware are part of IOT, and this will increase dramatically over the next few years.
He noted that creators of these devices will need to start creating them with security in mind, and not, as so many companies are currently doing, creating them to get to market first.
This, he said, makes the devices vulnerable to large-scale attacks. He cited last year's Mirai botnet attack that used IOT devices to flood certain sites and make some of the Internet unavailable for a period of time.
Sikazwe's presentation looked at mobile payment: where it is now and where it is going. He said Africa is ripe for mobile payment growth because of the large unbanked population. He pointed out SA's mobile payment adoption is above average in the world.
However, he noted the mobile payments boom hasn't yet happened the way it was predicted it would. He said this is because payment infrastructure has been slow to evolve, the payment experience has been inconsistent, and it is not yet an ingrained behaviour to pay with phones.
Sikazwe said convenience, speed, millennials, improved customer experience and loyalty apps will drive growth.
Below is a video with highlights from the Cape Town meet-up held last year. The YouTube channel also hosts videos with talks from mobile experts around the world that are uploaded weekly.
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