Globe unit, Bridge Mobile develop regional mobile payment service

Bridge Mobile and Globe Telecom subsidiary G-Xchange are developing a regional mobile payment service that will benefit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) initially in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

BMA is Asia Pacific’s largest mobile alliance group composed of eight leading mobile operators in the region, namely, Airtel (India), CSL (Hong Kong), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia). It operates through a Singapore-incorporated joint venture company, Bridge Mobile Pte Ltd.

Those initially taking part in this regional mobile payment service are CSL of Hong Kong, Maxis of Malaysia and Taiwan Mobile.

The alliance is investing up to $40 million over the next three years to build and establish a shared regional mobile infrastructure, and to deliver a wider suite of regional mobile services.

The regional mobile payment service will be based on Globe’s GCash solution in the Philippines and will enable OFWs in BMA member-operator territories to open their own GCash wallets outside of the Philippines for fund transfer to other GCash users, merchants and institutions in the Philippines – directly from the local SIMs of participating member operators.

Globe officials said this offers greater flexibility and convenience to OFWs in terms of fund transfer and management as currently, GCash wallet accounts can only be set up and accessed with Globe-roaming SIMs.

G-Xchange (GXI), a wholly owned Globe subsidiary in charge of its mobile commerce initiatives, was also set up for the purpose of developing, designing, administering, managing and operating software applications and systems for m-commerce. The company is set to showcase GCash, Philippines‚ first integrated mobile payments service in this week’s CommunicAsia.

GXI president Rizza Maniego-Eala said there is an opportunity for the company to expand its network of potential partners to tap into additional foreign markets. "The GCash platform has been enthusiastically received by the international community and interest have come from selected parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa," Eala said.

She added that the first implementation of GCash in Asia will happen towards the latter part of this year. This development was made possible with Globe’s partnership with Bridge Mobile Alliance.

"In the regional implementation of the GCash service, Bridge Mobile provides a common-access gateway that aggregates and routes all transactions to and from the GCash server to Bridge Mobile Alliance member operators and their customers. This ensures successful end-to-end fulfillment of GCash transactions," according to Jojo Vega, GXI’s head of international business development and licensing.

Seow Yoke Kong, Bridge Mobile vice president for service and technology development said that there is an estimated community of 1.5 million OFWs located across Bridge Mobile Alliance member operator territories such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan. "Together with Globe, we offer to these OFWs a new means of convenient mobile payment via the GCash solution," he said.

Widely recognized as a pioneering innovation in m-commerce both locally and abroad, GCash addresses broad scale mobile payment needs by facilitating micro-finance transactions, remittances, bills payment, and other fund transfers via SMS.