The Zong Payment Index (ZPI) is designed to track the bill-to-mobile spending patterns of Zong’s global user base, broken out by its top 40 markets.

The ZPI reflects three factors: (1) consumer’s willingness to use their mobile phone to buy digital goods online; (2) the consumer’s ability to use their mobile phone to make purchases as determined by mobile operator policies (e.g., spending limits, price points, etc); and (3) the cost of mobile payments as determined by mobile operators’ fees which sometimes result in consumer surcharging.

The global aggregate index shows that the average monthly spend using Zong is up 37% in the last 12 months.

The Mobile Money Exchange has a great visual tool that nicely illustrates the proliferation of mobile money deployments around the world.

This tool was originally developed by the GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked team (covering the countries under their remit) and has been extended to include all worldwide mobile money deployments.

The global deployment tracker requires the Google Earth browser plug-in; its worth getting it if you don't already have it.

Several new positions for payments professionals have recently been posted to Glenbrook's payments industry job board in March:

• VP Operations - Frontstream Payments - Lacey, WA
• Director of Business Development - Vesta - Portland, OR
• Decision Scientist, Microsoft Ads Platform - Microsoft - Bellevue, WA
• Manager, Product Strategy - Finsphere - Bellevue, WA

Is your company hiring? Are you in the market for qualified payments professionals? You can reach the best candidates here! Post your job openings for payments professionals on PaymentsJobs.com!

The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) has announced "the first convening of its Financial Capability Innovators Development Lab. The initiative will serve to support a small group of leading innovators through peer learning opportunities in order to strengthen their capacity, sophistication, and efficiency in delivering solutions that promote the financial capability of underserved consumers."

Western Union has announced that consumers can now send money directly to the mobile “wallets” of Safaricom M-PESA subscribers in Kenya from 45 countries and territories. 'The service rides on Western Union’s worldwide network and trusted global “hub” for processing cross-border remittances. It also builds on the unprecedented success of M-PESA, a domestic mobile money transfer service in Kenya offered by Safaricom that has attracted more than 13.5 million customers since its launch in 2007."

On the wires:

• J.P. Morgan’s Order-to-Pay Network Crosses 100,000 Supplier Threshold
• NRF Welcomes Consumer Groups’ Support for Swipe Fee Reform
• Near Field Communication Forum Announces New Members (including CSR, Google, and Intel)
• New Mercator Report on Prepaid Card Market in China
• The VoiceCash Single Prepaid MasterCard (Germany)

On the web:

• NFC World: Amazon Planning NFC Payments and Marketing Service?
• SmartMoney: The New Best Credit Cards
• Vending Times: Cashless Payments Go Mainstream In Unattended POS Markets
• TechCrunch: Social Payments Enabler WePay Celebrates First Birthday