According to a new report from Juniper Research, the global mobile money transfer market will grow beyond $65bn by 2014. The service mainly focuses on developing countries where users do not have access to banking services and use traditional means of payment instead, such as physically transporting the money or storing cash at home. Mobile Money offers a speedy remittance channel for people to send and receive money efficiently, encouraging circulation of money nationwide.

Apliman Technologies and Creova have partnered to offer a secure and practical mobile money transfer solution to Africell, allowing people to send and receive money, nationwide, to friends and family who themselves may not have bank accounts. Consequently, it brings many unbanked customers under the formal financial system, and enables money transfers to break through rural areas which allows for economic growth in developing economies.

Africell is a mobile telecommunications company serving The Gambia and Sierra Leone. It is a subsidiary of the Lebanese telecommunications company Lintel Holding. Africell has 652,000 subscribers (2q 2009) in the Gambia and 600,000 in Sierra Leone. Africell is the Leading GSM Operator in the Gambia with more than 69% of the GSM market Share. All its core network and radio equipments are supplied by Siemens.

‘Apliman-Creova’ Mobile Money solution is a customizable system that works on a role-based model: Sender, Dealer, Point of Sales Agent, Cashier, and Administrator, to ensure reliable delivery of funds, anytime, from a customer to any other mobile phone user. No special interface is required besides a mobile phone. It is designed to be integrated into the existing mobile network infrastructure, allowing mobile operators and financial institutions to offer a value added service without incurring additional costs. The platform can be further customized to support other payment methods which helps customers and dealers not only to perform paperless money transfer, but also to complete financial settlements in real-time. Fraud reduction is guaranteed with three security levels and extensive set of transaction reports. This simplicity, reliability, and flexibility add to the attractiveness of the service and create exciting opportunities for the mobile money ecosystem.

“Apliman Technologies is proud to team up with Creova, one of the major international players in Mobile Money. We are looking forward to a continuous and prosperous cooperation that will expand this technology into many other African countries, where it is becoming one of the most important money generating VAS services.”, said Mr. Tarek Itani, Executive Director of Apliman Technologies.

“Our solutions are at the forefront of the mobile payments industry,” said Ramzi el Fekih, CEO of Creova. “The Mobile Money service provides an innovative set of low cost financial solutions, proven to increase banking activities and create customer loyalty. It is easy-to-use, accessible, secure, and traceable. Creova is unique in providing innovative technology, managed services, and go-to-market partnership models to ensure success of the Mobile Money service. It will revolutionize the world of mobile telephony and financial services while optimizing and providing alternative choices and freedom to customers. Our rich and completely modular platform design has been developed with the goal of allowing our customers a fast deployment, get a preferred position in the market, and open to future applications according to the needs of customers and the local market(s).”

“We believe Apliman is the right partner for Creova in the region, and our expectations on the current and future projects that will arise from our partnership are very high. This is the first of many more that will surely follow”.

Source: Apliman, Wikipedia