Ooredoo proceeds with expansion plans

Ross Cormack, the CEO of Ooredoo Myanmar, said “E-commerce has great potential in Myanmar along with increasing numbers of smart phone users. People will shop commodities and services online with their smart phones. Giving services for e-commerce is enriching people’s life technologically. We expect this joint venture with Rocket Internet would become the leader in e-commerce sector.”

As part of the cooperation between Ooredoo and Rocket Internet, Asia Internet Holdings has been established in 15 market places worldwide including Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and Australia for online retail sales and payment methods.

This investment complies with the country’s business rules and regulations and hopes to initiate within the mid-year of 2014. 

Rocket Internet is considered a leading business in the area of online payment and e-commerce.

Ooredoo Myanmar is the newest operation within the Qatari Telecom Group. 

In June 2013, along with Norway’s Telenor, Ooredoowas selected for telecommunication licences.

Targeting the launch of a nationwide 3G network this year, Ooredoo aims to offer a wide range of mobile communications services beyond voice and data to boost the quality of life and business sector.

 This will include the development of a comprehensive portfolio of life-enriching services, including mobile money services, a range of mobile health services, and services to support farmers and agriculture leveraging on its experience in launching those services in other markets. 

Yesterday, Ooredoo launched a mobile money initiative throughout the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. This will be also be unveiled in Myanmar.

With a successful initiative in Africa, the World Bank is promoting the use of mobile banking – to improve the quality of life. Inadequate, inaccessible financial services is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the poor are trapped in poverty. Without access to finance, the poor people cannot invest in tools to increase productivity, start a microenterprise, invest in education or health, or even take time to search for better opportunities. In addition, monetary exchanges require a physical location and people need transportation to get to the location, both of which can be problematic in infrastructure-constrained countries such as Kenya, particularly in rural areas. 

In Myanmar, around 80 per cent of over 60 million people don’t have access to any banking services nor have any bank accounts.

Inadequate, inaccessible financial services is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the poor are trapped in poverty, said the World Bank which is promoting mobile banking as a tool to ease poverty. 

Without access to finance, the poor people cannot invest in tools to increase productivity, start a microenterprise, invest in education or health, or even take time to search for better opportunities. In addition, monetary exchanges require a physical location and people need transportation to get to the location, both of which can be problematic in infrastructure-constrained countries such as Kenya, particularly in rural areas. 

A trial initiative was thus launched in Kenya. Developed by Vodafone and launched commercially by the company’s Kenyan affiliate Safaricom, M-PESA is a small-value (all transactions are capped at $500) electronic payment and store of value system accessible from ordinary mobile phones. 

Once customers have an M-PESA account, they can use their phones to transfer funds to both M-PESA users and non-users, pay bills, and purchase mobile airtime credit for a small, flat, per-transaction fee. The affordability of the service has been key in opening the door to formal financial services for Kenya’s poor.

Since its introduction in mid-2007, M-PESA had been adopted by 9 million customers as of late 2009 - 40 percent of Kenya’s adult population - and is now facilitating an average of US$320 million per month in person-to-person transfers (roughly 10 per cent of Kenya’s GDP on an annualised basis).

“Extremely rapid uptake of M-PESA is a strong vote of confidence by local users in a new technology as well as an indication of significant latent demand for remittance services. In recent months, M-PESA has begun allowing institutional payments, enabling companies to pay salaries and collect bill payments,” the World Bank said.