At Mobile World Congress, MasterCard and VimpelCom announced a strategic partnership combining MasterCard’s mobile payments technology with VimpelCom’s globally integrated telecommunications services. The partnership will provide innovative payment solutions to a new generation of customers, both banked and underserved, to VimpelCom’s 212 million customers in 18 countries.
While key markets have been identified for the roll out of mobile money services, a prepaid program in Italy for Wind Italy’s customers, in partnership with CartaLIS. Italy will be the first program to launch in 2013. Further country and market deployments will leverage the full range of both companies’ complementary solution suites.
“Mobile phones are at the center of peoples’ social and commercial lives. Today, in many of the countries where VimpelCom operates, mobile penetration is much higher than ownership of a bank account,” explains Mikhail Gerchuk, group chief commercial and strategy officer of VimpelCom.
“We are pleased to be partnering with MasterCard to deliver innovative and reliable financial services solutions over our mobile networks. We share the vision of providing our existing and future customers with quick, convenient and secure ways to pay locally and remotely. This collaboration will also help us to strengthen our customers’ experience by offering value add services including, but not limited to person to person payments, bill payments and mobile commerce.”
In a similar deal, MasterCard and Orange signed a strategic agreement to enhance and accelerate the delivery of mobile payments in Spain. The main goal of this agreement is to develop, deliver and deploy the very latest in mobile payments technologies, ensuring Orange customers in Spain benefit from the most advanced payment solutions, offering safety and security on the go.
“Thanks to this strong alliance we will be able to explore and provide the most suitable payment solutions, giving people across Spain the chance to shop and make payments easily and safely, wherever and whenever they are,” comments Pilar Aurrecoechea, MasterCard Spain and Portugal general director.
It is estimated that in 2015, transactions through NFC technology will mean 74 billions dollars, and in 2016, 85% of the payment terminals will accept contactless payments.[1]
Alicia Calvo, Orange Spain innovation director, affirmed that “this is a decisive step for Orange in our commitment to offer to our private and business customers the most innovative mobile payment solutions using several technologies for the different scenarios of electronic payments. The partnership between Orange and MasterCard allows us to combine the best capabilities to fulfill this promise.”
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