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Follow UsBARCELONA, SPAIN: Money-transfer specialists, the Western Union Company has launched its Digital Vendor Program intended to extend the reach and accessibility of Western Union Money Transfer services to mobile finance initiatives in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
“Establishing a strong mobile vendor program is a critical step in the delivery of our ‘Western Union Anywhere' service proposition,” said Matt Dill, SVP and Head of Western Union Digital Ventures in a press note.
Successful mobile money service offerings are typically deployed on a single-country basis and include three service providers working together in a single ‘mobile finance ecosystem.” Participants include mobile network operators, with well-known consumer brands and large mobile subscriber bases; financial institutions, with the legal and regulatory authority to store and hold money; and mobile platform providers (often called m-wallet or m-banking platforms) capable of managing account interaction between the consumer handset, the wireless network and the financial institution.
“There are a lot of pieces that have to fall into place to deliver on the promise of mobile financial services,” said Red Gillen, senior analyst Alternative Payments for Celent. “Western Union is taking steps to remove technology barriers and make it easier for its partners to launch a global money transfer service, and that can only be a net positive.”
Western Union is certifying mobile platform vendors to reduce integration costs and accelerate go-to-market activities for banks and mobile operators by creating standard technical deployments.
Western Union entered the mobile finance space in the second quarter of 2008, with an endorsement for a global pilot program by the GSM Association. The first providers to join the certification program are four mobile finance platform providers with both active and planned service implementations: South Africa-based Fundamo, India-based mChek, U.S.-based Sybase 365 and Singapore-based Utiba Pte.