Telecom Lead Europe: Portugal Telecom will deploy white label service offered by mPowa offering mobile payment services to small businesses and SOHO segments.
Portugal Telecom is also planning to expand mobile payment deal in other markets around the world, mainly Brazil and Africa.
In addition, Portugal Telecom is in talks to offer Powa’s eCommerce platform to its customers.
According to Gartner, worldwide mobile payment transaction values will surpass $171.5 billion in 2012, a 61.9 percent increase from 2011 values of $105.9 billion. Number of mobile payment users will reach 212.2 million in 2012, up from 160.5 million in 2011.
“We expect global mobile transaction volume and value to average 42 percent annual growth between 2011 and 2016, and we are forecasting a market worth $617 billion with 448 million users by 2016,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner.
Portugal Telecom has around 100 million clients worldwide.
“Powa will be integrated in Portugal Telecom Group’s innovative solutions and services with a ready to deploy, robust, resilient and secure infrastructure to allow us to roll out mobile point of sale solutions to our customers,” said Celso Martinho, CTO of the Sapo Portal, owned by Portugal Telecom.
The mobile payments market will experience fragmented services and solutions for the next two years. Technology providers will have to cater their solutions to the local market that will be using different access technologies, business models and partners, and under different regulatory conditions.
According to Gartner, in developing markets, money transfer and airtime top-ups will account for most transaction volume, and money transfers will account for the largest portion of the transaction value because of the demand for secure and efficient ways of storing and transferring money.
Ticketing/parking also appeals across many markets because it can improve efficiency in transacting, as well as offering user convenience. In developing markets, such as Africa and South Asia, users can buy bus and railway tickets using a mobile payment service so that they can secure tickets earlier where tickets are often in short supply.
In the first half of 2012, Portugal Telecom’s consolidated Capex amounted to EUR 522 million.
PT has already supplied 1.6 million homes with fiber to the home (FTTH) and has deployed a 4G-LTE network that offers speeds of up to 150Mbps to more than 90 percent of the Portuguese population. PT is the leading triple-play operator in the Portuguese market, with 802,000 customers as at September 2012.