Nokia Unveils Financial Services For Banking Deprived
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Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced a new service today called Nokia Money, which will allow people without bank accounts and credit cards to access financial services, so they can easily do things such as pay utility bills or send money to another person via a phone. Release.
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The service has a huge potential target market given that mobile phone ownership significantly exceeds bank account usage in some countries. For instance, there are more than 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts in the world. Nokia did not say how the business would work, and whether it would receive a portion of each transaction, much like PayPal. The Nokia Money service will be developed by Obopay, a company Nokia invested in earlier this year. Nokia will show off the service at its own Nokia World even on Sept. 2 and 3 in Stuttgart, Germany, and will launch it gradually to selected markets beginning in early 2010.
Mobile payments are clearly seen as the next step for delivering financial services to hundreds of millions of people, who don’t have access to banks on a regular basis. Often times, its difficult because of geography—people are not close to urban centers where banks can afford to have physical branches. However, it sounds like Nokia will have to build up some infrastructure, too. In a release, it said it is building a wide network of “Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts.” It’s unclear if that’s a physical location, however, it does make sense that deposits will have to be made in person to some extent.
Nokia also said the service will be open and interoperable with other payment services as well, which may help with that burden.
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