Global Money Transfer Pilot Uses Mobile To Benefit Migrant Workers And The Unbanked

GSMA and MasterCard piloting a programme to make it far easier and cost-effective to transfer remittances globally

12th February 2007 - Barcelona, Spain: The GSM Association has launched a pilot programme aimed at tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world’s 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don’t have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable.

Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, the GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than $1 trillion by 2012.

To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while the GSMA is setting up a pilot with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorization, clearing and settlement. The GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks. The hub will enable migrant workers to trigger international money transfers using their mobile phone and their families to be notified via their mobile phones.

"The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80% of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries." said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators. "We are mobilising financial services for the billions of people who are unbanked and the underbanked."