Western Union has tied-up with GSMA to facilitate cross-border mobile money transfer.

The tie-up is developing a commercial and technical framework that mobile operators can use to deploy services that enable consumers to send and receive low-denomination, high frequency money transfers using their mobile phones.

The first commercial services that make use of the framework are likely to be rolled out beginning in the second quarter of 2008.

As per a press release, Western Union and GSMA believe there is an opportunity to create and grow a large new market for low denomination transfers.

Thirty-five GSMA operators with more than 800 million customers in more than 100 countries are participating in the GSMA Mobile Money Transfer programme.