Globe’s Mynt selects Amdocs for fintech services
Globe Telecom’s fintech subsidiary selected Amdocs to power its new Casa service that will enable local retailers to offer bill payments, money transfers, closed-loop merchant payment and loyalty programme management from a single platform.

Mynt, Globe’s wholly-owned fintech startup offering a range of financial services, will use the vendor’s mobile financial services solution to provide retailers with a cloud-based digital money platform, which they can offer to customers on a white-label basis.

The Amdocs solution will be deployed on Amazon’s public cloud. Based on a multi-tenant system, it enables retailers in different locations to be hosted as separate tenants on a centralised platform managed by Amdocs.

Under a five-year software-as-a-service agreement, Amdocs will assume complete responsibility for development, deployment, operation and maintenance of the Amdocs solution via a revenue-sharing model with Mynt.

Thuraya joins LoRa Alliance
Dubai-based satellite service provider Thuraya joined the LoRa Alliance to support its mission to standardise low power wide area network (LPWAN) deployments around the world.

Marwan Joudeh, Thuraya M2M product manager, said membership gives it access to an ecosystem of developers and solution providers. “This way of working will encourage the mass adoption of low cost, long range IoT/machine-to-machine connectivity, while extending the range of such solutions through our robust satellite network into remote and rural areas.”

The LoRa Alliance was launched in 2015 to define and promote a low power, secure, carrier-grade standard for LPWA Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. It faces competition from other non-cellular unlicensed offerings such as Sigfox and Ingenu’s RPMA, as well as 3GPP-backed cellular standards NB-IoT and LTE-M.

Thuraya is the second satellite operator to join the alliance, after rival Inmarsat signed up in February.

Singtel expands multi-city roaming
Singtel, Singapore’s largest operator, expanded its multi-destination data roaming plans to 26 countries across Asia, Europe and North America.

Its ReadyRoam plan offers postpaid customers 1GB for 30 days for SGD20 ($15) in 11 Asian countries and the same allotment for SGD35 ($26) in 15 countries, including the US, the UK and Germany.

Customers can subscribe to ReadyRoam 1GB for 30 days up to seven days in advance through the My Singtel app. Under the plan, additional data is available for SGD19GB or SGD34GB depending on the countries visited.

Alibaba Cloud to expand overseas footprint
Alibaba’s cloud business plans to set up four data centres outside of China as it seeks to expand its global market share.

Alibaba Cloud, which has less than a 10 per cent share of the global cloud computing market, will set up facilities in Dubai, Germany, Japan and Australia, Reuters reported. Amazon and Microsoft are the global leaders in cloud computing but face restrictions in China.