At the recent Mobile Payment Nigeria Conference, held in Lagos, experts in mobile payment systems pointed out the importance of collaboration between stakeholders in Nigeria's mobile banking industry, Business Day reports.

During his presentation, Deji Oguntonade, co-founder of SugarAnt Technologies and pioneer manager of FlashMeCash said that collaboration is needed to ensure the success of mobile banking in Nigeria.

He said that there is a need to adopt a co-operative business model with a payment intermediary to ensure security, instant money transfer, clearing and settlement as well as money laundering checks.

Oguntonade explained that key players should not be competing to launch the next best payment system but should rather collaborate to offer a solid, widely acceptable platform. He said that a widely acceptable platform can only become a reality if each stakeholder focuses on its core business.

According to him, banks should concentrate on clearing and settling transactions; mobile operators should provide a reliable network to conduct transactions; while the payment intermediaries should provide the process and switch transactions between all parties.

In his presentation, Barry Coetzee, chief executive officer of South African e-payment company iVeri said there is a requirement for thorough regulation in the mobile payment area. He said that the lack of a decent regulatory framework is leading to uncontrolled innovation of mobile financial products of which the effects is yet to be experienced.

The newspaper further reports that Nigeria currently has about 64.4 million mobile subscribers but that only 24 million people have a bank account.