BlackBerry plans mobile money services

FEB 27,2014.

Hindu Business.

Canadian smartphone maker Blackberry sees India as a key market for launching its mobile money services. The company plans to launch money transfer services on the Blackberry Messenger platform in partnership with local banks.

John Sims, President, Global Enterprise Services, BlackBerry told Business Line, “We have secure transport and a lot of people connected on that transport. We are looking at launching mobile payments, person-to-person money transfer. But we will not do it alone. We will do it with partners who have required licences.”

“In India, as Government moves to the National ID scheme, we see opportunity to integrate into that to be able to use finger printing recognition as ID to do money transfer,” he added. BlackBerry will, however, launch the service first in South East Asian markets.

The move comes after BlackBerry launched a new instant messaging service called the Enterprise BBM (eBBM) Suite, which promises highly secured communication medium. BBM Protected will be the first solution offered in the new eBBM Suite and the company believes that it can ride on the new secured platform to offer services, such as money transfer and mobile payments.

The secured BBM service will be available only on BlackBerry phones. The normal BBM, which is free, has been opened up to other mobile platforms including Android. Of the 85 million BMM users, 25 million are enterprise users and the company is hoping that they would be willing to pay to get a more secured instant messaging platform such as the eBBM.

Sims said the new messaging platform will be compliant with the requirements law enforcement agencies in different countries. “BlackBerry follows the regulations in different markets and Governments can tell us what needs to be done to meet their requirements and we will do it,” said Sims. BlackBerry was forced to set up a server in Mumbai that enables security agencies to keep of track of data flowing through BlackBerry Internet Services and BBM.

In a bid to get more share of the enterprise segment, BlackBerry launched the next generation of BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), BES12. The new platform will offer backward and future compatibility, unifying BES10 and BES5 on to one platform allowing enterprise users on older platforms to migrate to the new version seamlessly.