Mobile Money expects double-digit growth in five years

“We already started our services in major cities at the end of last year,” said Kyaw Htoo Linn, the firm’s chief executive officer.

“We hope to extend our services to all parts of the country. By end of 2014, there will be over 6,000 agents. We really hope to serve more than 80 per cent of the population by giving them access to basic financial services.

“We aim to lead the mobile financial services revolution in Myanmar. To achieve this,we are integrated with all the present mobile operators of the country, MECTEL and MPT, and our network of mobile money agents is also strengthened with the Innwa Bank’s national branch network.” 

The highly modular, flexible and scalable system provided by France’s Oberthur Technologies and the rich set of functionalities of their MoreMagic platform will allow the firm to extend its services to offer microfinance and loyalty programmes, he said.

The first national mobile money service, offered in both English and Myanmar, includes person-to-person transfer, agent-assisted cash-in/-out, air time top-up, salary disbursements and merchant payments. 

The service launched with the permission of the Central Bank of Myanmar will support the government’s initiative to bring better financial services to the masses leveraging on the new telecommunication infrastructure that was recently enhanced, Kyaw Htoo Linn said.

Myanmar Mobile Money launched a joint effort with OT, one of the leading firms in digital security solutions for the mobility space, and consulting partner company Mobilemate Telecommunication Pte Ltd, to launch the service.

“With the challenges a developing nation generally faces, such as lack of human resources or physical infrastructure, I am extremely glad to have been able to bring the OT Solution to Myanmar after reviewing the various suppliers in the Mobile Money space,” said Tham Kwok Whye, managing director at Mobilemate Telecommunication, a Singapore-based project management and service development consulting firm which mainly operates consulting work in Myanmar, Vietnam in the area of telecoms, trading, software development, IT system in financial services.

Tham Kwok Whye mentioned that during the project planning stages, a joint project team of the OT and Mobilemate effectively delivered the system based on many new developing requirements and tight timeline.

“As of today, Myanmar Mobile Money service is able to propose many new services that were previously not available in Myanmar,” he said.

Currently, MoreMagic ,a division of Oberthur Technologies based in Boston with focus on building innovative solutions in the mobile financial services area, is giving advice and techinal support to the Myanmar Mobile Money.

“We are really proud to enable our customer to close the gap that the majority of the population faces thanks to our end-to-end Mobile Money solution. The ability to pay and transfer money with their mobile phone already transforms the everyday life of the less privileged, as they can conduct transactions anytime and anywhere and now have access to economic activities in which they formerly did not participate” said Pankaj Gulati, chief executive officer of MoreMagic.

Myanmar Mobile Money has been appointing “super agents” and agents in many townships all over the country since January 24. 

“I am really interested in their service. So I contacted a super agent in my township this morning. He told me that I can give him (the agent) from the minimum amount of Ks 1000 to the maximum Ks one million in cash in order to get their service,” said Kyaw Lin Oo from Sanchaung Township who started to use the service, adding that there will be only one “super agent” in a township whereas there may be several agents in the township.

The Myanmar economy has experienced strong 6 per cent or higher annual growth over the last few years, but less than 20 per cent of the population is able to access banking services in an economy that is largely cash-based, according to the statement by Oberthur Technologies.