The partnership combines Oberthur Technologies’ SIM OTA server, SIM browsing gateway and SIM secured gateway together with Utiba’s transactional platform in a global solution which can be possibly operated from any of Oberthur Technologies’ datacenters.
The mobile money solution proposes a suite of secured end-to-end payment and money transfer services helping mobile operators and financial institutions to offer new financial services in mobility such as microfinance, domestic and international money transfer, airtime sharing, e-payment or e-banking.
The solution is expected to address both matures countries, where mobile subscribers are often banked with features phones and developing ones where banking services and money transfer for underbanked and unbanked can be proposed to large populations through secured applications in the SIM card.
Xavier Drilhon, managing director of card systems division at Oberthur Technologies, said: “With 20 years experience in securing financial transactions and mobile operators traffic, we started a couple of years ago to secure mobile money transactions. With the technology provided by Utiba, who has a proven track record in mobile commerce, we expand further our range of mobile money services for both mobile operators and financial institutions.”
Richard Matotek, CEO of Utiba, said: “Our objective is to enable the subscriber to remit funds to anyone, anywhere knowing only their mobile telephone number. Utiba aims for an ambitious vision of ’empowering everyone to make mobile payments’ and we see fostering this relationship with an industry expert like Oberthur as a giant leap towards achieving that aim.”
