By Telecom Lead Team: Comviva, Sybase 365 and Utiba have
joined MasterCard mobile money partnership program.
The MasterCard Mobile Money Partnership Program is aimed
at helping more than 2.5 billion financially-underserved consumers worldwide
gain access to formal financial services through their mobile phones.
Recently Juniper Research said the market for all types
of mobile payments is expected to reach more than $600 billion globally by
2013, double the current figure.
MasterCard is working with these three preferred platform
partners to enable consumers to purchase goods and services via their mobile
phones at millions of brick and mortar and online merchants worldwide, as well
as transfer funds and pay bills.
With about five billion mobile phone users worldwide,
this program provides powerful, smart and convenient new payment options to
people through a device that’s already in the palm of their hands today,” said
Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive, Mobile, MasterCard Worldwide.
Stored value accounts, managed primarily by mobile
network operators and supported by banks, offer basic services such as mobile
top-up, bill payments and P2P payments within the network
.
As a dominant player in the mobile financial industry,
Comviva has an enviable position of scale and global reach in the emerging
markets. This makes us an unequivocal partner of choice for MasterCard to
launch its mobile money partnership program,” said Manoranjan Mohapatra, CEO,
Comviva.
By working with Comviva, Sybase 365 and Utiba, the first
companies to join the program, MasterCard is helping mobile network operators
and financial institutions accelerate and expand the development of their
financial services offerings to their customers.
By providing solutions to emerging markets through a
flexible partnership program, MasterCard is unlocking opportunities for
innovation throughout the entire ecosystem,” said Matthew Talbot, senior vice
president of mCommerce, Sybase 365.
Comviva, Sybase 365 and Utiba’s mobile money solutions
are installed or being deployed by more than 200 telecommunication operators
and banks across the globe covering more than one billion consumers.
Expanding our customers’ national mobile wallet systems
to access MasterCard’s ubiquitous payment network will allow the previously
underbanked to participate in the global economy,” mentioned Richard Matotek,
Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Utiba.
