Mobile phones have achieved a remarkable 73% penetration of the available user market - almost every adult who wants a cell phone already has one, according to Yankee Group. Indeed, more people have access to mobile GSM technology globally than have access to electricity or television - and cell phones have become so entrenched as personal equipment that individuals are more likely to leave home with their cell phones than their wallets!
Having nearly topped out on revenue from new voice service subscribers, telecom operators now maximize revenue by delivering innovative data and services over the handset to existing subscribers. Within this dynamic new business model, the emerging mobile banking and m-commerce markets hold great potential for the telecom industry. Operators will be able to generate revenue by offering a vast set of services that virtually everyone can use, regardless of individual financial sophistication or resources. Converging telecom and financial technologies will make the wireless handset a virtual banking institution to the unbanked and the underbanked, and offer a convenient, easy-to-use, high-tech means for those with established financial accounts to make transactions instantly or move their money about.
Today the telecom industry is well-placed to unite itself with financial organizations because its mature infrastructure is capable of providing reliable, secure and high speed transaction services that are a natural fit with financially-oriented transactions.
The alliances telecoms make with banks and with Kabira will enable telecoms to shift from being movers of financial information to providers of full mobile banking and transaction services.
The Kabira Mobile Transaction Platform™ is a mobile financial transaction processing platform that enables wireless operators to offer secure banking and payment transactions to customers using their mobile devices.
Kabira combines its proven expertise in modern, high-performance telecom and digital payments environments into a single, unified platform for creation and management of any mobile payment service. How? By leveraging the capabilities of its telecom solutions, such as real-time service activation and provisioning and mediation, and those of its financial services solutions that provide split-second acquiring, authenticating, switching and authorization of payment transactions.
