The market has no cost effective transaction interchange between financial institutions and payment platforms. Hence it is not ready for such a product.

Again, when we talk mainstream, how many people are actually going to load an application into their phones and how many tech aware smartphone owners are out there...

Is Barclays / Stanchart / KCB going to let Craft Silicon fiddle with their core banking applications to integrate ELMA which will also compete with their mobile banking platform.

The current success with Indian banks could be a result of a good existing business relationship.

In my opinion any new product in the mobile payments arena should firstly be able to hold up against MPESA.

A few questions:

1 - Regulatory issues - Has ELMA got the needed regulatory approval from CBK/CCK? Third party handling data (end user and POS/supplier)
2 - Security - how secure is this?
3 - The green giant - this service seeks to dislodge MPESA who themselves (and other MNOs) seek to be the mobile "cloud" over which mobile transactions are carried. They own the networks that ELMA wants to use (http://ndesh.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/how-it-works.png) They will fight this since they can do it (they CAN put their personal differences aside to do this).
4 - BANKS - they too may fight it. How much does it augment their business models? Most issue debit cards and prefer revenues to accrue from that. They have invested heavily in card payment systems. Most have mobile banking apps for their end users. At the periphery are providers managing data centres for such payment systems. Still in the mix are banking cash payment providers like PesaPoint and Kenswitch.

@KamalBudhabhatti,
Congrats.We might not have 3G on all phones yet but we are certainly headed there.Give it perhaps another 2-3yrs.

My advice:
(i)Try have your app on Android Market,Ovi store,Facebook etc and more Kenyans will access it & experiment with it.
(ii)Don't agree to be viewed as competition to Mpesa.These are two different paradigms.One is of control...the other is more of "open source" peer-peer kinda thinking.You must not win over Mpesa.You can actually share the customers since they will still need loading/withdrawal points.

About CBK & regulation....well CBK has always been behind.How does one get approval where there is no concrete framework on peer to peer money transfer apps??!

Anyway,I hope we have more and more cash apps that can give us options to Mpesa.We need more Elmas,Tangazas,MobiCash etc.....but be ready for challenges!

He probably has run out of steam. Started brightly but the market maybe hasn't responded fast enough. I enrolled the time they were running ads in the DN. Lost the applicaation when I gave out my phone.
I support the suggestion that he develops an android or IOs app.
This way even if you change your phone u can access the app on the new phone with the same system.