Visa is set to further penetrate the global
payments market with two deals that will stimulate the card
issuer’s reach in developing countries as well as the US
market.
Visa has acquired South African mobile financial
services provider Fundamo, which provides mobile payment platforms
for both mobile network operators and financial institutions in
developing economies.
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Simultaneously, Visa has extended of its deal with
UK vendor Monitise, who, contrary to Fundamo, provides mobile
payment solutions to banks in developed countries.
The announcement of the two deals follows Visa’s
announcement that it is going to introduce a
digital wallet to the North American electronic payments
landscape as early as autumn 2011.
Reaching the unbanked with
Fundamo
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By GlobalDataVisa acquired Fundamo for $110m to spur its
global push into the payments space to enable transactions across
cards, computers and mobiles.
This means, in particular, that Visa will
reach Africa’s, Asia’s and Latin America’s unbanked and
under-banked population with P2P payment, bill payments and
branchless banking services.
Visa’s CEO Joseph Saunders said:
“Combining Visa’s unparalleled network scale, global reach,
extensive product suite and established financial institution
relationships with Fundamo’s expertise in delivering mobile
financial services in developing economies presents us with an
important long-term opportunity to grow our business and drive
financial inclusion in key geographic markets.”
Fundamo has over 50 active mobile financial
services deployments across more than 40 countries, of which 27 are
in Africa, Asia and the Middle East alone, serving 5 million
registered subscribers.
Expanding Monitise contract for US
reach
The expansion of Visa’s agreement with Monitise is part of the card
issuer’s strategy to distribute new mobile banking services
to existing Visa account holders outside the US.
In addition to this key focus, the extension of the contract
will also include the launch of a mobile banking service for Visa’s
debit and prepaid processing platform DPS in the US. Like the
service with Fundamo in developing countries, the US service will
include mobile payments, P2P, but also mobile transaction alerts
and marketing offers.
