Zap mobile banking lands in Niger, Sierra Leone and Malawi

Zain has extended its mobile banking footprint across Africa, with the launch of Zap services in Niger and Sierra Leone, as well as a full commercial pilot taking place in Malawi. This move follows the launch of services in February 2009 in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, where more than 10 million people have already used the service.

Using Zain’s continental reach, Zap’s mobile commerce facilities are now accessible to more than 150 million people in six countries, making the Bahrain-based operator the largest mobile commerce service provider in the world based on geographic coverage, enabled customers and service functionalities.

Subscribers can use their Zap-enabled mobile phone to withdraw cash or pay for goods or services such as school fees and utility bills, to send and receive money between people, to access funds and manage their bank accounts, as well as top-up their own or somebody else’s airtime.

This expansion comes in direct competition with fellow heavyweight in Africa, MTN, which announced its MobileMoney service one month after Zap’s initial launch in March 2009, claiming the largest deployment of mobile wallet services at the time. The deal was worth US$9.7 million and aimed to enable more than 80 million MTN subscribers across 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East to access mobile banking services.

However, according to MTN’s website, almost one year later services have only been rolled out in Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Ghana, Cameroon and Uganda.