Send money around the world: from your cellphone

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 04 December 2007 11:07

Your IT - Home IT

The 35 operators between them have more than 800 million customers in more than 100 countries. The programme is being lead by Sunil Mittal, the chairman and managing director of Indian cellular operator, Bharti Airtel and is overseen by a steering committee made up of representatives from Bharti, MTN, Orange, Orascom, Smart, Telenor and VimpelCom.

This week Bharti Airtel and Western Union announced plans to pilot a mobile money transfer service in India that will enable Indians living abroad to send remittances to their families in India in an easy and convenient fashion through the vast networks of both companies.

This is a potentially huge market. The World Bank also identifies India as the number one remittance recipient market and statistics from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) suggest that the inward annual remittance into India stood at over $US26 billion for fiscal 2006 – 2007, approximately 10 percent of the global inward remittance market.

Bharti Airtel has more than 50 million mobile customer in India and Western Union, together with its affiliates Orlandi Valuta and Vigo, has more than 320,000 agent locations in more than 200 countries and territories. In India, Western Union operates through 45,000 agent locations, including 8,500 post offices and more than 14,000 bank branches across 5,000 towns and cities.