Banking for un-banked thru mobile phone

MANILA, Philippines - Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) has received three citations from GSMA, a global organization representing the worldwide mobile communications industry. Its influence spans 219 countries, nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, and over 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.

Of the 10 awards introduced by GSMA, Smart bagged three, including the best mobile advertising or marketing, best mobile money service for the un-banked, and the best mobile money service.

Likewise, Smart received a grant from GSMA for its Island Activation program. The program will connect remote islands and inland locations who are isolated or without access to financial services and limited electricity.

The program will build remote economies through reaching the under-banked and un-banked populations, thus enabling customers to send and receive domestic remittances, re-load e-wallets, pay bills and send money via the Smart Money Platform.

GSMA, which represents three billion GSM and 3GSM connections, said that the Asia Mobile Awards 2009, and of the Mobile Innovation Grand Prix – Asia Tournament, reflect the strong growth of mobile communications in Asia where it is believed to have grown by 370 million.

“This growth is driven by innovative new services, applications and ever richer mobile content,” it said in a press statement.

Other winners are: Gameloft for mobile game; Singapore Telecom Mobile for best mobile music service; Telegent Systems for best mobile TV or video service; Orascom Telecom Bangladesh for best mobile enterprise application product or service; Geodesic for best mobile Internet service; Grameenphone and Huawei for the Green Mobile Award; and Nokia N97 Mini for best mobile broadband handset/device.

GSMA also approved six additional grants from the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Fund (MMU), which is administered by the GSMA Foundation Inc.

New grantees include AKTEL in Bangladesh, Dialog Telekom PLC in Sri Lanka, Grameenphone Ltd in Bangladesh, MTN Cameroon, MTN Uganda and Vodacom Tanzania. Grants are available for projects promoting the uptake of mobile money services for the unbanked and underbanked, with funding for projects up to a value of $1-million.

The GSMA also released its Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory Report, which shows that since 2003, the Asia Pacific market has more than tripled in size, adding over a billion connections and growing at 26 percent to reach 1.7 billion connections in 2008. The study was carried out for the GSMA by global management consultants A.T. Kearney across the 47 countries in the region.

The report shows that, as the global mobile market has grown beyond four billion connections, the Asia Pacific region will cross the two billion connections threshold for the first time this year. It is projected that the Asia Pacific market will exceed three billion connections in 2013.