SMART Communications Inc. and MasterCard have partnered to offer mobile payment solutions to banked and unbanked mobile consumers. MasterCard Worldwide tapped Smart, through its unit Smart Hub Inc. to provide the mobile financial services platform to support the new MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway.

MasterCard’s new payments processing solution will enable financial institutions and cellular phone networks around the world to deliver end-to-end mobile payment services through the MasterCard Worldwide Network.

With the new service, Smart said banked and unbanked mobile consumers gain access to a wide range of MasterCard Mobile payments solutions, providing greater payment convenience and security over cash using their mobile phone to make purchases, send and receive money between family and friends, transfer funds between accounts, pay bills, deposit funds such as payroll or social benefits.

Smart said users of the service can also top up mobile airtime, load value to prepaid accounts, get cash from automated teller machines (ATMs), and keep track of their balances and activities with mobile alerts.

Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), an independent policy and research center housed at the World Bank, and the GSM Association had said that there are more than four billion people worldwide who have a mobile phone, but users had a bank account—with the number to grow from 1 billion to 1.7 billion by 2012.

“The Mobile Payments Gateway will help to make mobile payments a way of life for mobile phone users around the world,” Joshua Peirez, group executive of innovative platforms for MasterCard Worldwide said.

G-Xchange Inc. (GXI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom, has underscored the importance of forging strong local and global partnerships if small players are to succeed in the e-commerce market.

Rizza Maniego-Eala, GXI president said that by combining one’s resources with those of other companies, the multiplier effect is greater.

She said that GXI, using its GCash mobile payment platform, tied-up with banks and local merchants for various services such as remittances, savings, loans, bills payments, among others. This arrangement, Eala said, allows GCash to grow the market and also to expand its sales force.
DARWIN G. AMOJELAR