Thursday, August 27, 2009

Nokia... Nokia...

There are very few times when you feel pure, unadultrated pride about the company where you work for. This week has been one of them.

And no, it is not about the N900. Which does not mean that I am not excited about the phone. An open source phone, made by the biggest supply chain owner in the world. Can you imagine the fun we are going to have now? The applications that are going to be developed. This is going to be a game changing device.

But, I am more excited about Nokia getting into money transactions. This is going to be as game changing as sms was so many years back.

But more importantly, it is going to allow people to send money back home is a safe and easy way, not falling into the trecherous interest rates of your local moneygram guy. It is going to change the way the villages in Asia and Africa sell and buy. It is going to influence the purchasing habits of the young kids who grow up with mobile phones and their grand mothers who learnt how to use a mobile phone so that they can keep in touch with their extended and far away family. It is going to change the way people handle money.

And that is an amazing, gobsmacking thing to do.

I cannot wait to see how this service is going to be rolled out, and how it changes the way we handle money. I just hope everyone think big and think global. Making it affordable for a daily laborer in India and a sharecropper in Namibia.