Vodafone expands in location services and money transfer
Published: 9 December, 2008
READ MORE: Vodafone
Two of the hottest applications in mobile are location services and money transfer, and Vodafone has signed deals this week to expand its presence in both. It has teamed up with money transfer giant Western Union to pilot a mobile scheme in Kenya, and has acquired Swedish GPS applications firm Wayfinder.
Vodafone will pay a cool €24m for the latest addition to its mobile applications platform, and looks to be creating a set of integrated web services that will be branded by the cellco and create a differentiated user experience, which the carrier hopes will be more appealing than those of other operators, or the generic platforms being created by vendors and web players.
For instance, it is likely that Wayfinder's GPS-enabled applications will be integrated with the social network platform that Vodafone acquired earlier this year with Zyb, for which it paid €32m. This could find Wayfinder's Navigator mapping app, Active fitness and running software, and Wikipedia Earth database, all ending up as components of a Vodafone specific, location aware social network and set of web services for the rising number of GPS-enabled devices. So far, the Wayfinder software runs on Symbian and Windows Mobile phones.
In Africa, Vodafone is working with Western Union to pilot a mobile money transfer scheme, building on an existing service, M-PESA, which the carrier has been running with the largest Kenyan cellco, Safaricom (in which Vodafone holds a 35% stake). This service has attracted over 4m customers since its launch in March 2007. Now it will be expanded to allow M-PESA subscribers to receive international remittances using Western Union's global processing network. The pilot will take place through a select number of Western Union agents based in Reading, UK and will allow consumers to send funds to any Safaricom mobile subscriber in Kenya. Recipients can then either withdraw the funds via one of the 4,000 M-PESA agents in Kenya or forward it to another Kenyan mobile subscriber.
The service is targeting expatriate migrant workers who send money back home to Kenya. According to World Bank figures, Kenya received approximately US$1.3bn in international remittances last year. Vodafone has recently expanded the M-PESA service to Tanzania and Afghanistan.
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