Nigerian banks under the Western Union money transfer arrangement will soon begin money transfer through mobile phones.
Some of the Nigerian banks under the Western Union Money transfer scheme include First Bank, Zenith, GTB, Oceanic and Intercontinental bank.
They will also have the opportunity to leverage on the platfrom offered by GSMA new alliances on the mobile money transfer scheme to offer the services.
The Western Union Company, which in the past 18 months has entered into an alliance with Mobile Money Transfer programme of the GSMA on Wednesday, announced new developments in the programme which increased the number of markets being served from three to 54.
It also said it has moved the market from one wholesale remittance provider in 2007 to 12.
Apart from the alliance with the Western Union Company 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 RBS Group, a global bank, as a remittance partner and is working with them to finalise the offering.
"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 for the 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 said.
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.
The GSMA will continue to build partnerships that will enable it to support the four remittance provider models that have been identified through the programme: Global Processing Company, Wholesale Bank, New Company and Wholesale Remittance Provider.
The new partners announced on Wednesday offer 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 air time transfer and top up. Beyond RBS’ market-leading 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.