Azure Media debuts Zala™ Mobile Money Transfer Application for Blackberry Devices.

Azure Media , the mobile marketing, advertising and strategy firm debuts Zala™ (myzala.com), the first mobile money transfer application developed exclusively for Blackberry® devices at the 2008 Blackberry® Developer’s Conference. Zala™ is the first dual consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer application in the financial services space that leverages the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server (BES) and the BlackBerry® Mobile Data System (BMDS). The tremendous value of the Zala™ application is that it permits secure person-to-person transactions on a unified communication platform, which creates an optimized user experience and equally optimized enterprise deployment, maintenance and security strategy for any organization that is considering mobile banking, bill presentment or payment as a commercial service.

MTN reportedly has initiated a money transfer service code named mobile money transfer.

The Chief Commercial Officer, Erik van Veen, said the new product was still at the pilot stage involving 200 customers. “The product has been undergoing testing since October. We will introduce it officially after further tests to guarantee security, reliability and accessibility to the majority of the people,” he said.

Kenya’s Safaricom has a similar service. Further Erik explained that, to use this service, one’s sim card has to be upgraded; one can open an account of up to sh1m from MTN agents and send it to recipients, who will also receive from an agent all over the country within minutes. The telecom firm was cleared by the central bank to before it started tests, he added.

Zain is planning to introduce mobile money transfer service which will be available to subscribers of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania enabling them to send and receive money over the borderless network. Zain Africa CEO, Gabriel said that the ZAP service is one of the innovations that the group is set to launch later this month as it seeks to reach its target to become one of the top 10 global telecom brands with a six billion U.S. dollars EBITDA rating by 2011 and a 110-million-strong subscriber base, up from the current 1.3 billion dollars and 50.7 million subscribers respectively.

The UAE has started testing a new money transfer scheme which allows people to use a mobile phone to transfer cash, according to Jean Claude Farah, regional vice president of Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan at Western Union.

The service is currently being trialled in two corridors worldwide – Hawaii to Philippines and UAE to Philippines.

“We are trying to combine services so that people would be able to send a money transfer through a mobile phone,” he told Arabian Business on the sideline of the Mobile Money Transfer Conference (MMT) in Dubai.
The latter country was chosen as the receiving end due to its large immigrant communities in both the UAE and Hawaii.

Mobile payment and mobile transactions will be the booming new market of the next 15 years.

This event is the first meeting point of all mobile oriented professionals willing to share their vision and maximise their experiences around multiple added value services and recently emerging with mobile capabilities.

This event is the opportunity to learn more about the latest developments and experiences in the following areas of mobile services and technologies: money transfers, mobile banking, NFC transactions, transportation, parking, remote payment such as ticketing, m-Commerce, marketing and coupons, m2m services such as vending.

Conference Location: Portes de Versailles - Hall 5, PARIS

Visa continues to expand worldwide presence with payments processing JV. Visa has formed a payments processing joint venture with India-based Yalamanchili Software Exports in a bid to tap fast developing regions like Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The card network holds a controlling interest in Visa Processing Service (VPS), which is headquartered in Singapore and begins operations this week serving existing clients.

The firm will specifically target business outside of Europe and the US, notably Asia Pacific, Latin America, Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.