Western Union Money transfer via mobile phones underway
From Sonny Aragba-Akpore, Barcelona, Spain
If all goes well, Western Union money transfer in three major currencies - the British Pound Sterling, the Euro and American Dollar - will soon be made possible via mobile phones, the Global System of Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) announced in Barcelona, Spain yesterday.
An initiative of the Mobile Money Transfer (MMT), unit of GSMA, the scheme when it kicks off in the next few months, will enable beneficiaries to use their handsets as terminals for payments in conjunction with Western Union-appointed banks in various countries.
Complementing the alliance that has successfully been in place with the Western Union Company over the past 18 months, the GSMA has selected Belgacom International Carrier Services (Belgacom ICS) and its technology partner, eServGlobal, as a new remittance provider in the MMT programme. To add further flexibility for operators, the GSMA has also chosen the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), a global bank, as a remittance partner and is working with them to finalise the scheme.
In countries where Western Union facilities exist, banks that have been in the business will automatically serve as payment points under the new initiative.
Expected to be more flexible, the handsets will serve as the major identification to beneficiaries of such money.
Major Nigerian banks that are engaged in the Western Union transfer platform First Bank, Zenith Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Oceanic Bank, and Intercontinental Bank will be part of the initiatives.
"Since the launch of the MMT programme in 2007, we've made significant progress to catalyse the mobile money market," said Bill Gajda, chief commercial officer of GSMA.
"We've delivered live commercial deployments of mobile remittances and established five active corridors with Western Union, we've increased the number of markets served from three to 54, and we've moved the market from one wholesale remittance provider in 2007 to 12 providers today. In addition, we've established price points that enable mobile operators to offer affordable services to consumers, which will make remittances much more accessible to a larger addressable market. The partnerships we're announcing today will serve to further accelerate the availability of money transfer and other financial services to a wider section of the global community," he added.
The GSMA and its MMT partners have established a commercial and technical framework that enables mobile operators to deploy services that allow consumers to send and receive low-denomination, high frequency money transfers using their mobile phones. With the alliances with Western Union, Belgacom ICS and the RBS Group, the MMT programme offers a variety of solutions to mobile operators.
Each of the partners yesterday announced offers, a unique proposition in the mobile money transfer value chain, further expanding the scope of the programme and its services. For instance, in addition to being a mobile remittance platform, Belgacom ICS' HomeSend solution, which was built in partnership with eServ Global, is capable of providing international airtime transfer and top up.
Beyond RBS' foreign exchange trade system, the group brings in-market regulatory compliance and banking operations expertise to operators through a co-branded ('Powered by RBS') joint offering in relevant markets.
The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites more than 750 of the world's mobile operators, as well as 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, media and entertainment organisations.
