Ooredoo has attracted more than one million mobile money subscribers with services that pull previously excluded customers into the financial system.

The operator group currently offers money services in three markets across its footprint: Qatar, Indonesia and Tunisia.

Services include domestic and international remittance payments; top-up of user’s own prepaid accounts, as well as those of friends and family (another means to spread remittances); paying bills; G2P (government-to-person) payments, including salaries.

A key market in the future is Myanmar, a rare untapped opportunity, where Ooredoo won a mobile licence in June this year.

The operator views the country as a prime market for money services because its 60 million population has limited access to conventional financial services.

At present the average citizen is unlikely to have either a bank account or a mobile phone. However, they are likely to acquire a phone a lot sooner than banking services, given launches in the near future by Ooredoo and rival Telenor.

Rival Vodafone, which owns M-Pesa, floated the idea of mobile money in Myanmar, before it dropped out of the bidding for unrelated reasons.

Nasser Marafih (pictured), Group CEO, predicted how Ooredoo customers across its footprint will be able to use mobile money “throughout their daily lives, for everything from micro-loans to paying at shops and receiving their salaries”.

“As we transform our operations throughout 2013 and 2014, we will take our expertise to launch innovative and localised mobile money solutions across our footprint with a strong focus on empowering under-banked communities in markets like Myanmar,” he said.

The operator does not breakdown the one million figure but Indosat (Ooredoo) is likely the largest contributor. It is the third-largest operator in Indonesia with 54 million subscribers. In Qatar, the operator has 2.49 million subscribers, while Tunisiana has 7.38 million subscribers (All figures are Q3, 2013 GSMA Intelligence).