Pakistan may be the poster child of Telenor’s mobile financial services today but the operator has hopes for its fledgling efforts elsewhere too, according to its Q4 results.
Financial services now account for nine per cent of Telenor’s total revenue in Pakistan, which hit NOK 1.74 billion ($228 million) in Q4.
And Easypaisa, a joint venture between Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Microfinance Bank, had close to 13 million customers (end-December 2014).
However, Telenor also reported a promising start for a mobile banking service in Serbia, which launched in September. As of end-December, the service had 32,000 customers.
And the operator said “Hungary, Myanmar and others are in the pipeline” for financial service launches.
In Hungary, Telenor has either launched or is set to launch a mobile payments service, in competition with local rivals Magyar Telekom and Vodafone which are equally keen on pushing NFC-based services. The spate of activity follows a year-long pilot by the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association.
Telenor Myanmar set up a partnership with Yoma Bank to offer mobile banking, with the aim of providing basic financial services via mobile phone in a country where only six per cent of the population has a bank account.
The Norwegian operator has high hopes for its very different, new markets. However, for the moment, Pakistan remains its main source of revenue.
During 2014, Easypaisa enabled 113 million money transfers with a total value of $3 billion, a growth of 42 per cent over 2013.
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