Oxigen, Luup to offer fiscal services on mobiles

MUMBAI, INDIA: Oxigen Services Pvt Ltd, a kiosk banking service provider and Luup, a banking mobile payments solutions provider, have mutually agreed to offer low-cost and seamless financial services in India.

Pramod Saxena, Oxigen Services’ managing director and chairman and Morten Hofstad, Luup’s regional director Middle East, Africa and Asia signed an agreement in Mumbai today. Trond Giske, Minister of Trade & Industry of Norway along with Norwegian delegation was also present during the signing ceremony.

According to the agreement, both the firms will provide low-cost and seamless branchless banking, foreign and domestic remittances along with airtime top-up through the banking channel using mobile phones.

Oxigen will use Luup’s mobile money technology platform and services to run all of its bank-oriented mobile financial services across India with a focus on rural areas.

“It’s a simple process but has far reaching consequences on huge number of people. With this facility, a large number of blue color workers and migrant laborers in the Gulf region can now transfer or send money back home to their family and relatives using the mobile phones,” Saxena said.

About USD25 billion of remittance is sent from Gulf via different channels such as bank transfers, exchange houses and hawala. “And the cost of sending the money back home is very high but if it’s done electronically using banking partners, retailers and banking correspondents, the cost come down significantly as well as quicker and secure money transfer,” Saxena added.

“The partnership with Oxigen is a key step in expanding Luup’s international payment gateway. We build multi-lateral distribution corridors for seamless, cost-effective and convenient foreign and domestic remittances,” Hofstad said.

“By signing up key partners from banks, exchange houses and payroll processors we create gateways such as the one from the Gulf region to India, bringing vital new solutions to the Indian community,” Hofstad added.

According to Hofstad, the Government of United Arab Emirates and some other Gulf countries have passed a law that allows the employers to pay salaries directly into their employees’ salary bank accounts and not in cash.

However, the operating cost of bank accounts for the migrant labors and blue collar workers remains high and so the use of mobile phones helps them get access to banking services such as withdrawal, transfer, receiving or remittance at low cost through the medium of mobile phones, according to Hoftsad.

Recently, Oxigen has also tied up with the State Bank of India (SBI), where Oxigen retailers has been appointed as SBI’s business correspondents (BC) to carry out banking transactions on bank’s behalf.

Speaking to CyberMedia News, Saxena informed, “Oxigen will increase its retailer network to 200,000 by the end of next year. The company has been growing around 30 percent annually for past few years but with the launch of new banking services, our target is to grow at 50 percent rate yearly.”

The Gurgaon based company has 250 staffs and 25 percent of them are in IT division, which are involved in development of software applications, POS terminals and mobile platforms. “We expect to double our staffs in the current fiscal,” Saxena concluded.