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There are no doubts in my mind mobile payments market is set for an explosive growth. Judging by the success of services like M-Pesa and the recent launch of Google Wallet, there’s a ton of money to be made by providing mobile financial services to people all around the world, whether they live in developed or developing countries.
A new entrant, GeoPay, announced plans to launch a full-scale mobile money transfer service in Central Asia in December 2011, as well as the establishment of a local office in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Once launched, the service will enable consumers to exchange cash from phone to phone – “providing instantaneous financial settlement services to its network of inter-connected mobile carriers’ customers using SMS/USSD technology.”
And after they’re “done” with Kyrgyzstan, GeoPay will undoubtedly expand to other markets with the goal to provide financial services to unbanked consumer markets in nations where users lack traditional methods of transferring cash from consumer to consumer.
Aside from the office in Central Asia, the company also opened an office (headquarters) in Reston, Virginia from where it will manage its global operations…
The question now is whether they have what it takes to compete in this increasingly competitive (though pretty big) market which is increasingly in the focus of big companies like Nokia and Google. We’ll see…
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
