Visa CMEA Claims World's Largest Mobile Commerce Deployment

Hilary Mitchell, head of Mobile Commerce, Visa International CEMEA comments: "Mobile operators are looking for solutions to reduce their costs and to differentiate their service; in ten years time we anticipate that all airtime will be paid electronically and scratch cards and top-up vouchers will be a thing of the past. Although there are many mobile payment services available worldwide, they lack commercialism due to the bilateral nature of the agreements - often limited to just one mobile operator and one bank, which restricts participation to the mutual customers of just these organisations."

"Visa CEMEA's technology platform, developed by technology partner Upaid, has the functionality and capacity to support multiple banks and multiple operators in any given market. Furthermore it can support multiple channels, such as SMS, WAP and USSD and multiple functions - prepay, postpay and bill payment - again depending on market and operator requirements," added Ms Mitchell.

Ashley Ward, CEO of Upaid commented: "Visa is a pioneer in the mobile payments industry and has proven that mobile payment services can be simple, secure, and actually facilitate the everyday payment lives of consumers. Upaid is proud to have worked with such an innovative team at Visa to enable what is now the most widely deployed mobile payment service in the world. We look forward to launching new and innovative mobile payments services with Visa in new territories in the upcoming months."

"Mobile payment will bring added convenience and cost-efficiencies to operators and consumer alike and we believe that Visa has developed a solution that will ensure the true success of mobile commerce. By the end of the year we expect to have launched Visa's solution in an additional five CEMEA markets in our efforts to provide buyers and sellers with the ability to conduct commerce at anytime and anywhere," concluded Hilary Mitchell.