Page 252 - The Digital Financial Services (DFS) Ecosystem

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Ecosystem

1 Introduction

It is widely agreed that "digital liquidity" is an important goal for developing markets. It enables the BoP to
receive, retain, and pay with eMoney – providing increased safety, greater access to credit, income growth, and
other well-documented benefits. This paper explores whether social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp,
and WeChat can accelerate digital liquidity – perhaps by enabling new forms of commerce, giving the BoP
more opportunities to spend and accept eMoney (and thus reduce costly "cash-out" transactions), and/or by
providing other tools to enhance financial inclusion.

2 Social networks

2.1 What are social networks?

Social network sites allow users to:

• Create public or semi-public profiles important for identity, trust, etc. (e.g., name, user photo, location,
job skills, education, interests, products offered, hours of operation).
• Establish a relationship network with other users (e.g., Facebook friends).
• Communicate within their network (individually or collectively) by sending messages, sharing media,
commenting, etc.
Some social networks have a relatively narrow focus, such as LinkedIn (professional connections), while others
are broader, such as Facebook and China’s WeChat.

Social media, by contrast, is a broader term with more emphasis on content creation and consumption
in an interactive public forum. Examples include posting videos on YouTube, curating news for Reddit, or
microblogging via Twitter. While social media does have commercial aspects (e.g., advertising medium), social
networks have more robust commercial capabilities and are therefore the focus of this report.

2.2 User activities

Social networks began as a way for users to communicate with each other – not as consumers or merchants,
but just as people. With Facebook in 2003, this meant rating the attractiveness of fellow students. LINE
(Japan) began in 2011 as a way for NHN (local ISP) employees to communicate after a devastating earthquake
compromised traditional communication systems. Tencent’s WeChat began in 2010 with free texting, walkie-
talkie features, and location services.

As these networks matured, they added related services such as chat, location check-in, photo sharing, and
sharing of news stories. The early days were all about services to build the user base.

Well-known activities include:
• chat (messaging between users)

• sharing and consuming
– personal content (status updates, photos of friends, family videos, points of view, etc.)
– third-party content (news stories, YouTube videos, etc.)

• playing games with other social network users, or alone (Candy Crush, Words with Friends, etc.)
• following celebrities, businesses, causes, or other topics of interest
• shopping (learning about a merchant, purchasing, etc.

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