Smart's mobile money service lands in Brazil

MANILA, Philippines - Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) has established a foothold in Brazil, and expanded the gospel of mobile banking on a global scale.

Through its subsidiary Smart Hub Inc., the country’s leading wireless services provider has locked arms with MasterCard International, Itau Unibanco, Redecard and mobile operator Vivo to offer its mobile banking technology to the exciting nation of carnivals, the samba and the bossa nova.

Smart president and chief executive officer Napoleon L. Nazareno said that they jointly launched MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway, a mobile payments processing platform that enables financial institutions and mobile operators to deliver mobile payment solutions through the MasterCard Worldwide Network.

Nazareno explained that MasterCard works with Itau Unibanco, Redecard and Vivo to deliver mobile payments solutions to the banks’ customers. Itau customers will use Vivo mobile phones to as a mobile wallet and to link their existing credit, debit or prepaid MasterCard or Maestro card accounts to their mobile phone to fund mobile-initiated payments.

“They will be able to use their mobile phones for a wide range of transactions such as making purchases, sending and receiving money between family and friends, transferring funds between accounts, paying bills and withdrawing cash from automated teller machines (ATMs),” the Smart chief executive said. Nazareno is also the president and chief executive officer of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), the country’s premiere telecommunications carrier.

Smart Hub leveraged its tried and tested mobile commerce platform for the MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway.

Recently, MasterCard and Vivo expanded its mobile broadband reach in Para (home to the largest concentration of Amazons) for e-health and e-education services. The same service will implement a mobile survey tool that will be used to monitor environmental impacts, diagnose patients, facilitate communications between communities, and run studies to monitor the life quality index.

Speaking before a recent international audience focused on mobile banking and branchless banking technology, Nazareno said that it has been in the business of mobile banking technology prior to going global.

Smart is one of the world’s pioneers in mobile money services. In 2000, it launched the world’s first mobile money service called Smart Money, and it was followed up with the introduction of Smart Load in 2003. Both services received global awards for innovation from the GSM Association, the global aggrupation of mobile services providers.

It entered into mobile banking agreements with domestic banks since the 2000.

“We now have mobile banking tie ups with 18 major Philippines banks either directly or indirectly via two ATM consortia. Over the past year, we have added more banks — such as the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) - and expanded our relationships with our current partner banks such as Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. (BDO). We are now for example selling more aggressively prepaid airtime load via bank ATMs and their mobile banking services,” Nazareno said.

He expressed satisfaction over the swelling interest among banks to use mobile phones as an additional service channel for their customers. “As it should be, growth in mobile banking is now more clearly being driven by the banks,” the telecommunications chief executive added.

Smart has partnered with four of the country’s leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering mobile money services.

And through the Islands Activation Program, Smart will bring mobile money transfer services to poor communities in 40 remote island communities by next year. These poor communities have little transportation, limited electric power, no banks or postal money service.

“But they do have a strong Smart signal and a Smart distribution and retail network on the ground. By introducing mobile money transfers, we expect to benefit directly and indirectly almost 80,000 people per island. We are very gratified that the Islands Activation Program recently won the Mobile Money for the Un-banked Award at the Mobile Asia Congress of the GSM Association,” Nazareno said.

As an example, the Smart head cited its experience with the isolated population of Polillo island. In its first month of mobile money operations in October 2008, RHUDARDA, a cooperative in the island and Smart partner handled only about $200 worth of transactions.

By the end of September 2009, RHUDARDA’s monthly business exceeded $30,000. Using Smart’s mobile commerce services, the coop is generating healthy revenues and stimulating business activity in this remote part of the country.

“While Brazil offers tantalizing prospects, I derive a great personal satisfaction from our efforts in communities like Pollilo. Bringing mobile money to such communities means visibly improving people’s lives,” Nazareno said.