" ITREALMS: MoneyBox, PayBox collaborate on mobile banking

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

MoneyBox, PayBox collaborate on mobile banking

Nigeria-based mobile payment solution provider, MoneyBox Limited is collaborating with Europe-based Paybox Solutions AG to create the first all-purpose electronic currency in the country. The project is to run under a product named MoneyBoxAfrica.

The MoneyBoxAfrica is a new savings and payment system based on a scratch card enabled by any mobile phone network, offering cash-like way to remotely save, spend, and transfer money.

Moneybox Africa is an initiative of Nigeria’s leading technology focused investment and financing institutions Integrated Capital Services in alliance with ICSL, Interswitch, e-Tranzanct and SWIC Microfinance Bank, while partnering Paybox Solutions AG.

Thus it’s an innovative savings and payment system that convert any mobile phone to a micro bank, according to the Chief executive, MoneyBox Nigeria Limited and ICSL, Mr. Adeniyi Elumaro.

The new mobile payment system, he said, is based on scratch cards and enabled by mobile phones, availing customers to open their accounts on the streets, remotely save money into their accounts, top up their phones, pay utility bills and tithes, buy insurance premium, send money to friends and relatives, withdraw cash at agents’ locations or ATMs, get access to credit and make investments.

In addition, he said, the system provides basic m-Payment services with minimal sign up barriers, creating more businesses but accepting lower margins, supporting remote and proximity scenarios.

“Moneybox Africa also offers the end customers an easy upgrade path to a stored-value-account and eventually a bank account. It provides key services beyond the basic banking functionalities such as bill payment, airtime top up, international remittance with the appropriate user interface technologies. The Moneybox Africa offers cost-efficiency, convenience and flexibility,” he said.

Equally he said it is exciting to leverage Paybox’s expertise and technology in Nigeria and the continent at large.

“Together, we can fast-track Nigeria and several African countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). We will bring an innovative system to the market that could enable possibilities, bank the unbanked and under-banked and deliver dividends of democracy to Africans starting with Nigerians. With the Moneybox Africa, we will be able to change and simplify people’s lifestyle by enabling access to broader financial services for anyone,” Elumaro said.

He further said the possibility of delivering a suite of financial services to anyone with a mobile phone, which is a transformational technology, will change the Nigerian financial services industry beyond the imagination.

He added that Moneybox Africa has decided to work with Paybox because of its broadest mobile commerce offering worldwide.

Chief executive, Paybox Mr. Eckhard Ortwein, said the partnership with Moneybox Africa avails his firm the opportunity to demonstrate the huge transformational benefits of a mobile banking solution in emerging market economy.

“In cash-dominated markets, offering a banking solution to anyone with access to a mobile phone has a huge potential,” he said.



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