While covering a couple of mobile payments stories earlier, I used to wonder why aren’t mobile handset manufacturers entering this segment. Anyway, finally one of them has seen the light – Nokia in a release a few hours back has announced Nokia Money a mobile money management solution.
According to Nokia, Nokia Money will enable consumers to send money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, as well as to pay merchants for goods and services, pay their utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up). Nokia is also building a wide network of Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts.
For Nokia the technology is driven through Obopay a mobile payment solution provider. Obopay had entered the fast rising Indian mobile market a good year and half back and had picked up steam after RBI announced many of its views on mobile banking. Nokia in fact had made an investment of around $70 million in Obopay which set tongues rolling out the possibility of this move now happening at a point of time.
This comes close on heels to Nokia’s bid to enter the netbook market for which it is actually strongly placed in India in my mind. And you can see that the company is putting itself at the fore of the growth expected in digital media in emergin markets. It is interesting to note that while doing this Nokia isn’t going out of its orignial principle of connecting and these are in fact natural extension of its business principles and objectives.
Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant confirmed that some Nokia phones will have the necessary client pre-installed, but users will also be able download and install the client on Nokia phones and devices from other vendors.
269 million mobile phones were shipped to India in the last quarter. The mobile numbers and their growth are staggering and every business is looking to get their share of the pie. These two reasons are enough to suggest that Nokia already has a winner on its hands. However, it first has to contend with a lot many players in what appears to be a fast crowding niche. Though being Nokia it certainly holds a considerable edge in the segment.
