MEDI4NAMA

JANUARY 21,2013

Mobile value added services company Comviva has inked a strategic collaboration with MasterCard Worldwide and Tutuka to introduce financial inclusion solutions in Africa.

While the deal period or the financial details of the partnership were not disclosed, Comviva stated that this solution is essentially an extension of the Mobile Money partnership program Mobile Money partnership program launched by the company in collaboration with MasterCard in February 2012.

Comviva stated that this solution will allow mobile operators offering mobile money services to make use of its Mobiquity mobile payment platform and Tutuka’s prepaid processing platform to offer customers prepaid MasterCard cards or Virtual Card Numbers (VCN) linked to their existing accounts. Customers can then use these cards to transfer funds, pay bills and purchase goods and services from physical and online retailers in 33 million locations globally, who accept MasterCard as a payment mode.

Mobiquity Deployments

While there is no specific information on the Mobiquity deployments in Africa region, Comviva claims to have deployed the mobile payment platform in over 58 locations across Asia Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, with 490 million subscribers in 38 countries. Its also worth noting that Mobiquity accounted for 35% of Comviva’s revenues as of February 2012.

Comviva-MasterCard Partnership

In February 2012, Comviva had partnered with MasterCard to launch an open loop Mobile Money partnership program, allowing customers to access major financial services on their mobile phones. The company had stated that it will be working with MasterCard to implement the mobile money program globally, enabling customers to carry out financial transactions like bill payments, remittances and purchase of goods and services at physical and online merchants via mobile phones.

Comviva along with MasterCard was also planning to help mobile network operators and financial institutions develop and deploy financial services offerings to its customers, which includes virtual mobile wallets offering basic services such as mobile top-ups, bill payments and P2P payments within their networks. The company had claimed that this program is expected to help 2.5 billion customers in emerging markets to gain access to these services on their mobile phones.