Company Industry
Companies enter mobile money transfer market
The next two months will see a slew of new challengers to the existing mobile money transfer solutions M-Pesa and Zap
New faces are set to enter the mobile money transfer market in coming weeks, setting the stage for a bruising battle for market share and revenues as the industry matures.
The next two months will see a slew of new challengers to the existing mobile money transfer solutions M-Pesa and Zap, meaning consumers will soon have greater choice from a wider range of providers. Essar — which hopes to launch an initiative in tandem with Obopay — has said that trials on its service are progressing well and the company anticipates it will be able to meet a proposed September rollout.
It is unclear if Nokia and Essar, who have both invested in Obopay’s platform, will forge a joint partnership in this market as Essar officials maintained that they were keen to launch the service in Kenya in the next month.
“We have already received approval from the Central Bank to hold the trials which are progressing well and we are still on course for a September rollout of the service,” said Mr Srinivasa Iyengar, Essar Kenya CEO.
Telkom Kenya, which also hopes to launch its service known as Orange Money later this year, is angling to enter the market in October or November with a product targeting the unbanked.
Entire range
Using Orange Money, customers who do not have bank accounts will have access to an entire range of services making it possible to carry out day-to-day banking operations and transactions using their mobile phones.
This comes against a backdrop of the recent announcement by mobile handset manufacturer Nokia, which is poised to enter the growing mobile money transfer market with the launch of its own service which will target its users in developing countries.
Nokia Money will enable consumers to send money to other people just by using the person’s mobile phone number, as well as pay merchants for goods and services, pay utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards.
Nokia plans to become the first mobile handset maker to make an entry into the growing mobile payments field, and analysts said its entry could change the rules of a game thus far dominated by mobile service providers.
“Mobile financial services offer a market opportunity with long term growth potential. In many countries, mobile phone ownership significantly exceeds bank account usage, suggesting that many mobile phone users have very limited or no access to basic financial services. With more than four billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, global demand for access to financial services presents a strong opportunity to combine mobile devices with simple but powerful financial services such as Nokia Money,” said Mary McDowell, chief development officer, Nokia.
Market share
The mobile manufacturer hopes to leverage its position as the manufacturer with the largest market share to build a base from which it aims to target the over four billion mobile phone owners who do not have access to financial services around the world.
The Nokia Money service will be operated in co-operation with Obopay, a leader in developing global mobile payment solutions, which Nokia invested in earlier this year. Obopay lets consumers and businesses buy, pay, and transfer money through any mobile phone using Obopay’s mobile application, text messages, mobile Web, widget or Obopay.com.
It works on any phone to empower consumers and businesses with the convenience of mobile payments. Although the service is yet to be launched in any country, Nokia said it was already building a wide network of Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts.
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