Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Mobile money traceability and federation using blockchain services

  • Published:
Annals of Telecommunications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper discusses a new approach to mobile money, a money transfer solution via mobile phone, which uses accounts associated with Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) identifiers, and which is managed by the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). The first solution M-PESA launched in Kenya in 2007 is one of the world’s major mobile money services. Mobile money becomes the new monopoly of MNOs in an economic system where the rate of unbanked adults is very high. Currently, in 2019 Orange Money makes nearly 1.5 million transactions per day, which corresponds to a monetary value of nearly 15 billion CFA francs (CFA franc, officially African Financial Community franc) per day. The Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is the heart technology of mobile money transactions. Blockchain, which is the underlying technology of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has drawn a lot of global attention in recent years. Blockchain does not stop seeing its field of action widen. The rate of unbanked is so high in developing countries that it does not favor economy development. According to the World Bank, mobile money contributes to skip this obstacle. In this paper, we present the state-of-the-art of mobile money and its underlying technologies in the sub-Saharan countries in general, and in Burkina-Faso particularly. We propose a mobile money solution based on the blockchain, in order to increase security, trust, and move towards a federation of mobile money platforms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Agbezoutsi KE, Uriene P, Dandjinou TM (2019) Towards blockchain services for mobile money traceability and federation, 2019 3rd cyber security in networking conference (CSNet), Quito, Ecuador, pp 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSNet47905.2019.9108970

  2. L. Redaction, ‘L’Afrique est le leader mondial du Mobile Money’, servicesmobiles.fr, 02-Oct-2018. https://www.servicesmobiles.fr/lafrique-est-le-leader-mondial-du-mobile-money-41082/. [Accessed: Jun-2019].

  3. https://unctad.org/system/files/non-official-document/dtl_uemoa2018p21_mepagura_fr.pdf [Accessed: 24-Jun-2019].

  4. ‘Afrique: Enjeux de la bancarisation et inclusion financière | Africa24’. [Online]. Available: https://www.africa24tv.com/fr/afrique-enjeux-de-la-bancarisation-et-inclusion-financiere. [Accessed: 12-Jun-2019].

  5. Nguyen QK (2016) Blockchain - a financial technology for future sustainable development. In: 2016 3rd International Conference on Green Technology and Sustainable Development (GTSD), pp 51–54. https://doi.org/10.1109/GTSD.2016.22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Popova NA, Butakova NG (2019) ‘Research of a possibility of using blockchain technology without tokens to protect banking transactions. In: 2019 IEEE Conference of Russian Young Researchers in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EIConRus), pp 1764–1768. https://doi.org/10.1109/EIConRus.2019.8657279

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Hanifatunnisa R, Rahardjo B (2017) Blockchain based e-voting recording system design. In: 2017 11th International Conference on Telecommunication Systems Services and Applications (TSSA), pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSSA.2017.8272896

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Thuy LV-C, Cao-Minh K, Dang-Le-Bao C, Nguyen TA (2019) Votereum: an Ethereum-based e-voting system. In: 2019 IEEE-RIVF International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies (RIVF), pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/RIVF.2019.8713661

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu Q, Guan Q, Yang X, Zhu H, Green G, Yin S (2018) Education-industry cooperative system based on blockchain. In: 2018 1st IEEE International Conference on Hot Information-Centric Networking (HotICN), pp 207–211. https://doi.org/10.1109/HOTICN.2018.8606036

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Nath I (2016) Data exchange platform to fight insurance fraud on blockchain. In: 2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW), pp 821–825. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDMW.2016.0121

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Wu H-T, Tsai C-W (Oct. 2019) An intelligent agriculture network security system based on private blockchains. Journal of Communications and Networks 21(5):503–508. https://doi.org/10.1109/JCN.2019.000043

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. He X, Alqahtani S, Gamble R (2018) Toward privacy-assured health insurance claims. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData), pp 1634–1641. https://doi.org/10.1109/Cybermatics_2018.2018.00273

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Mugambi A, Njunge C, Yang SC (May 2014) Mobile-money benefits and usage: the case of M-PESA. IT Professional 16(3):16–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. ‘L’usage d’Internet dans le monde en cinq chiffres’, Les Echos, 09-Feb-2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/lusage-dinternet-dans-le-monde-en-cinq-chiffres-963228. [Accessed: 12-Jun-2019]

  15. L. E, ‘Mojaloop : l’application de paiement Blockchain financée par la fondation “Bill & Melinda Gates”’, JournalduCoin.com, 17-Oct-2017. https://journalducoin.com/blockchain/mojaloop-lapplication-de-paiement-blockchain-financee-fondation-bill-melinda-gates/. [Accessed: 14-Jun-2019].

  16. Thiga M (2016) A model for the delivery of SMS and USSD location-based mobile advertising using network-based positioning. In: 2016 IST-Africa Week Conference, pp 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  17. Léopoldie M (2017) ‘Qu’est-ce que l’USSD et pourquoi est-ce un moteur de développement économique en Afrique ? Medium

  18. Tobbin P (2011) Understanding mobile money ecosystem: roles, structure and strategies. In: 2011 10th International Conference on Mobile Business, pp 185–194

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Lakshmi KK, Gupta H, Ranjan J (2017) USSD - Architecture analysis, security threats, issues and enhancements. In: 2017 International Conference on Infocom Technologies and Unmanned Systems (Trends and Future Directions) (ICTUS), pp 798–802. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTUS.2017.8286115

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Gupta P (2010) ‘End to end ussd system’, TATA Tele Service Limited, INDIA. July 7:2010

    Google Scholar 

  21. RIEKE R, Zhdanova M, Repp J, Giot R, Gaber C (2013) Fraud detection in mobile payments utilizing process behavior analysis. In: The 2nd International Workshop on Recent Advances in Security Information and Event Management (RaSIEM 2013), France, p 8

  22. Lakshmi KK, Gupta H, Ranjan J (2019) UPI based mobile banking applications – security analysis and enhancements. In: 2019 Amity International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AICAI), pp 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  23. Nakamoto S (2008) “Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system”, www.bitcoin.org, [Accessed: June, 2019]

  24. Dasgupta D, Shrein JM, Gupta KD (2019) A survey of blockchain from security perspective. Journal of Banking and Financial Technology 3(1):1–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Urien P (2018) Towards secure elements for trusted transactions in blockchain and blochchain IoT (BIoT) Platforms. Invited paper. In: 2018 Fourth International Conference on Mobile and Secure Services (MobiSecServ), pp 1–5

    Google Scholar 

  26. Salman T, Zolanvari M, Erbad A, Jain R, Samaka M (2019) Security services using blockchains: a state of the art survey. In: IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials, vol 21, no. 1, pp 858–880 Firstquarter 2019

    Google Scholar 

  27. Unibright.io, ‘Blockchain evolution: from 1.0 to 4.0’, Unibright.io, 07-Dec-2017. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/@UnibrightIO/blockchain-evolution-from-1-0-to-4-0-3fbdbccfc666. [Accessed: 13-Jun-2019].

  28. Urien P, Dandjinou M, Agbezoutsi KE (2018) ‘BTOOLS: trusted transaction generation for Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain based on crypto currency SmartCard’, presented at the ICDT 2018. In: The Thirteenth International Conference on Digital Telecommunications, pp 45–52

    Google Scholar 

  29. Nyamtiga BW, Sam A, Laizer LS (2013) Security perspectives for USSD versus SMS in conducting mobile transactions: a case study of Tanzania. 1(3):6

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LTCI - Telecom ParisTech, 19 Place Marguerite Perey, 91120, Palaiseau, France

    Kodjo Edem Agbezoutsi & Pascal Urien

  2. Université Nazi BONI 01 BP 1091, Bobo-Dioulasso, 01, Burkina Faso

    Toundé Mesmin Dandjinou

Authors
  1. Kodjo Edem Agbezoutsi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Pascal Urien
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Toundé Mesmin Dandjinou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kodjo Edem Agbezoutsi.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Agbezoutsi, K.E., Urien, P. & Dandjinou, T.M. Mobile money traceability and federation using blockchain services. Ann. Telecommun. 76, 223–233 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-021-00840-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-021-00840-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation