Zain has extended its ‘Zap’ mobile banking service to Ghana, making it the group’s seventh African operation to offer mobile wallet services. Zap is already implemented in Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda.
Philip Sowah, country manager for Zain Ghana at the launch of Zap mobile banking services
Currently 80 per cent of the Ghanaian population is unbanked, meaning traditional financial services are too remote or unavailable to the majority of citizens. Zap will allow Zain customers to top-up airtime, send and receive money, and pay for goods and services using their mobile phone.
Additionally, the m-commerce facility is compatible with Zain’s One Network roaming platform, which gives subscribers the flexibility to move across geographical borders and still be able to access their Zap accounts and make transactions in exactly the same way as they can in their home country.
The Zain Group currently provides mobile voice and data services to over 70 million customers as of 30 September, 2009 with a commercial presence in 23 countries. The group is currently in exclusive talks until March 25 with Indian giant Bharti Airtel to sell Zain’s African operations, excluding Sudan and Morocco. Bharti Airtel offered a sum of US$10.7 billion.
Zain Africa, formerly branded Celtel, includes approximately 42 million subscribers and represents around 58 per cent of the operator’s customers as of the end of the third quarter 2009. Bharti Airtel is India’s largest operator and has almost 125 million subscribers across India.
1 comment so far ↓
It is good to see that the Ghanaian population will be able to join in the world of commerce, however, what is the financial capability of the demographic? If they are not banking how will goods translate electronically without incurring unrecoverable debt? That is my question. Seems to me that at the current time maybe this technology should stay in the West.
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