Alcatel-Lucent and Voice Commerce target emerging markets with mobile money services

Details: James Barton; Category: Mobile Finance; 05 October 2010; 8444 views

A new agreement between Voice Commerce and Alcatel-Lucent is set to provide new mobile money and payment options for mobile operators, with the two companies aiming to satisfy the burgeoning demand for these services in emerging markets...

Mobile service providers will be able to offer fully regulated end-to-end financial services through Alcatel-Lucent’s Mobile Wallet Service (MWS). Voice Commerce, which recently launched its Cashflows services, operates various financial services under licences covering the provision of payments, e-money services and is a member of both Visa EU and MasterCard.

With operators able to offer secure, regulated financial transactions, the service is aiming at emerging markets, where mobile phones are commonly used to deliver financial services. The MWS allows for a broad range of services, including remittances and payments.

The market for electronic mobile wallet services is growing fast and Gartner Group predicts it could reach $245 billion in value by 2014. Edgar, Dunn and Company predicts that mobile wallet users will reach 1.4 billion by 2015. Nick Holland, senior analyst, M-Commerce, Yankee Group commented, "We expect mobile payments to be an area of significant growth over the next few years as consumers are won over by the convenience, speed and security of paying by phone."

“Our goal is to provide a complete mobile money eco-system for the mobile operator,” said Anthony Belpaire, General Manager Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet Service. “For fast adoption of services across existing point-of-sale terminals, our customers need compliance with e-money licensing schemes and interoperability with global payment networks. Voice Commerce provides a unique market accelerator to make MWS a complete solution for mobile operators.”

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