Mobile business specialist DOCOMO Digital has announced its integration with Zain Group’s Application Program Interface (API) Platform.
The partnership will see the operator exposing its APIs, thereby helping to remove a significant barrier to developing potential digital partnerships from across the globe. Zain will initially launch the platform with a pilot phase in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and it will thereafter be gradually extended to all Zain operations.
To introduce this group-wide API programme, and connect its operating companies across the region onto a single enablement platform, Zain will work alongside the Apigee team at Google Cloud as the API platform provider, FOO, a leading regional mobile digital solutions entity as the developer, and Shift Technologies, a prominent Apigee Edge API Platform implementer in the Middle East region. This strategic initiative is designed to bring about greater agility to Zain as it considers new market opportunities, accelerating innovation, expanding into new business verticals and building future platform business model-based revenue streams.
To this end, Zain has partnered with payments provider DOCOMO Digital as its first new content partner using the new API layer. DOCOMO Digital offers a mobile commerce ecosystem-enabling platform that encourages financial inclusion for citizens worldwide. Thanks to this partnership, DOCOMO Digital will enable Zain with the most advanced VAS Digital Content hosted on its own Product Frameworks, and supported by a Best in Class Advertising Solution Platform & Service. Zain Kuwait and Zain Saudi Arabia will be the first operations to offer DOCOMO Digital’s services.
Commenting on the imminent launch of the API platform in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Bader Al-Kharafi, Zain Vice-Chairman and Group CEO said, “We are pleased to be collaborating with more blue-chip technology companies in the form of Google and DOCOMO Digital in rolling (out) the platform initially in Kuwait. In an ever-evolving and challenging telecommunications market, technology acts as an enabler for service differentiation and digital enablement. It drives our ambition to ensure a superior customer experience, and we believe opening up our APIs will help us to push continuous delivery of the best user experience whilst expanding contribution to the development of our digital services to a whole new universe of contributors.”
“Our partnership with Zain is very strategic, demonstrating the focus DOCOMO Digital has on MEA to drive scalable growth for our payments and content platform services,” continued Hiroyuki Sato, CEO of DOCOMO Digital. “I strongly believe this is one of the many such important partnerships we hope to forge in the region in coming months as it weaves into our prime aspiration of driving financial inclusion for 5 billion people worldwide with the greatest possible trust and convenience.”
