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February 13, 2013

ICICI, Aircel Among the First to Adopt Visa Mobile Managed Service

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

Visa has launched a plug-and-play mobile money platform that delivers mobile financial services to unbanked customers.

The service, touted as the world's first bank-grade managed service for mobile money, allows Visa to host and fully manage all aspects of a mobile money program on behalf of the provider, including consumer enrollment, transactions processing, authorization, clearing and settlement.

Aircel (News - Alert), a mobile service provider in India; and ICICI Bank, a leading banking chain in India, are among the first clients to adopt the service. The service has also been adopted by customers of Bank of Kigali and Urwego Opportunity Bank in Rwanda.

These customers can now gain access to a financial account linked to their mobile number.

The Visa mobile payment platform is built on Fundamo's (News - Alert) technology, the mobile money technology acquired by Visa in 2011. The service is being hosted in Visa managed data centers, and the platform is designed to comply with the regulatory frameworks established for mobile financial services.

"We applaud the pioneers in Africa, Asia and the Middle East who have launched closed-loop mobile financial services and reached so many consumers so quickly," said Bill Gajda, head of Global Mobile Products for Visa.

“As demand grows, so does the cost and complexity to maintain these services,” Gajda added. “Visa's new mobile money platform is designed to allow mobile operators and financial institutions to focus on their core business, while leaving the management of their mobile money service to Visa.”

“Through the Visa hosted and managed service, Aircel is now able to partner with local banks to offer our mobile subscribers access to money services that will simplify their financial lives,” said Geoff King, head of Mobile Banking, Aircel. “We begin with our partnership with ICICI to offer customers the ability to send cash across the country securely, to top up their prepaid mobile accounts, and pay their utility bills.”

Visa's new platform offers mobile network operators and financial institutions a local connection to Visa's global payment network, VisaNet. Visa can manage all aspects of a mobile money service, including mobile money program management, support for any mobile channel, support for a comprehensive set of transactions, customer support and regulatory compliance, and Visa-quality payment security.

Edited by Braden Becker