Comviva to Lead MasterCard’s Worldwide Mobile Money Partnership Program

Comviva, the global leader in providing mobile solutions beyond VAS, today announced a strategic partnership with MasterCard (NYSE:MA) to launch a first-of-its-kind open loop Mobile Money Partnership Program. Working together, Comviva and MasterCard will help the more than 2.5 billion financially underserved consumers globally to gain access to mainstream financial services – via their mobile phone.

Building upon its leadership in technology, Comviva has created a solid ecosystem of trusted business relationships and symbiotic partnerships. This has enabled Comviva to deploy a large number of Mobile commerce solutions across the globe. Comviva’s mobiquity™ is a multi award winning mobile financial solution that has already crossed over 55 deployments, 490 million subscribers in 38 countries. With mobiquity™ mobile users can quickly, easily and safely access a range of financial payment services. It also provides multiple proven integrations – including payment, banking, credit card and ATM switches and systems.

Commenting on this strategic partnership with MasterCard, Manoranjan Mohapatra, CEO, Comviva said, “With our established leadership in empowering mobile money technology across geographies, we are thrilled to support MasterCard’s first-of-its-kind open loop Mobile Money Partnership Program. Our dominance in emerging markets makes us as an unequivocal partner of choice for MasterCard to cater to underbanked segments with intuitive financial services. With mobile financial services turning into a key business strategy for banks and telecom vendors, this program will also give the right impetus to financial and social inclusion.”

“With about five billion mobile phone users worldwide, this partnership program provides powerful, smart and convenient new payment options to people through a device that’s already in the palm of their hands today. To ensure success of this program, MasterCard has partnered with the leading players in the mobile money ecosystem. Comviva was a key partner of choice to empower billions of underserved segments in the developing market,” said Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive, Mobile, MasterCard Worldwide.

The Mobile Money Partnership Program will address the need of consumers in developing markets through a readily accessible device, the mobile phone. Comviva will work with MasterCard to enable global consumers to purchase goods and services via their mobile phone at millions of physical and online merchants, as well as transfer funds and pay bills. According to Juniper Research, the combined market for all types of mobile payments is expected to reach more than $600B globally by 2013, double the current figure.

Stored value accounts, primarily managed by mobile network operators and supported by banks, offer basic services such as mobile top-up, bill payments and P2P payments within the network. Through this partnership, Comviva and MasterCard aim to help mobile network operators and financial institutions to accelerate the development of their financial services offerings to their customers.

Click to see Comviva Video on the Mobile Money Partnership program.

Visit Comviva at GSMA Mobile World Congress Barcelona at Hall 1, 1E01

About Comviva
Comviva is the global leader in providing mobile solutions beyond VAS. With an extensive portfolio of solutions spanning VAS infrastructure, applications delivery platforms and customer-facing applications, Comviva enables mobile service providers to enrich mobile users’ lives, whilst rationalizing costs, accelerating revenue growth and enhancing customer lifetime value. Comviva’s solutions are deployed by service providers in over 90 countries and power services to over a billion subscribers globally. For more information, please visit www.comviva.com

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About MasterCard
MasterCard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com, is a global payments and technology company. It operates the world’s fastest payments processing network, connecting consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. Mobile Payment Solutions (MPS) is a joint venture between MasterCard and Smart Hub Inc. that provides mobile payments processing and gateway services. MPS enables interoperability through the MasterCard Worldwide Network, providing comprehensive solutions that facilitate payments between mobile network operators, financial institutions and third party systems. Follow us on Twitter @mastercardnews, join the conversation on The Heart of Commerce Blog and subscribe for the latest news.

Axis Bank's travel card may be available for multi currencies now

Private sector lender Axis Bank is working on introducing multi currency services to its set of travel cards. The banks is looking towards offering travel credit cards in varied currencies and also couple value added services to them.

Other specialized services are also in consideration by the bank in a bid to make its offering of travel cards more lucrative. One such offering is a product which can be used for availing public transport in Singapore. Yet another service is put forward for people going abroad for studies. This service will be provided jointly with ISEC (International Student Exchange Card).

The bank had made an entry into the travel card segment in the year 2003 and since then has been providing a consistent average annual growth at rate of 40%, informed a bank official.

“This shows the potential for the travel card business. Even a 10 per cent conversion from currency in favour of travel cards will mean a huge rise in volumes,'' the official said.