Obopay has teamed up with French bank Societe Generale to bring its mobile payment services to customers in Africa starting with a new service launching today in Senegal.
The service offered through Societe Generale de Banques au Senegal is called Yoban'tel by Obopay. It allows cell phone users to pay bills or receive money via text messages on their cell phones. The service is designed to help grease the flow of money for people who don't have bank accounts and are currently forced to carry large amounts of cash. After launching in Senegal, Societe Generale plans to launch the service in more African nations.
These kinds of services have taken off in places such as Kenya, where lots of commerce already happens through phones. The service is important for Societe Generale, since mobile payments is about as vital in some developing countries as automated teller machines are in the U.S. If you don't have the service, you lose the customers.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Obopay launched its Mobile Money for Banks platform in May. It allows banks to deploy their own branded mobile paymetns service within 30 days, allowing the bank's customers to transfer money to anyone via mobile phone transactions.
David Schwartz, head of product and corporate marketing at Obopay, said in an interview that the new service will be available to all people in Senegal with a mobile phone. The bank will allow people to sign up for the service through partners such as Credit Mutuel du Senegal, TIGO and CanalSat Horizons. The latter is a satellite TV service that is popular now because of the World Cup. Through that service, customers can pay for TV service via a mobile phone rather than wait in a long line and pay with cash now. Users can also load or pick up cash at designated locations throughout Senegal. They can use the service to send money to anyone with a phone in the country, or pay a bill.
"This lets banks capture customers they can't get today," Schwartz said.
Right now, banking is so limited in Senegal that people can spend an entire day waiting in line to pay a utility bill, said Richard Hababou, managing director of Societe Generale Innovations Group. Now customers can get Yoban'tel by Obopay through a prepaid account. To carry out a transaction, someone sends an short message service text message to transfer money. It works with all telecom carriers.
Schwartz said there are an estimated 4 billion phones in the world, but only 1 billion bank accounts. So the potential for the market is big. Obopay was founded in 2005 and it has more than 200 employees. The company operates payment services for millions of people in the U.S., India, and Kenya.
Obopay’s existing partners include Nokia, MasterCard, Citibank, AT&T, Verizon, Essar, Yes Bank in India, and BlackBerry. The company has raised $140 million.