 
Mahindra Comviva and Airtel Tanzania have announced that they have jointly won the Global Telecom Business (GTB) Innovation Award for Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC payments in the "customer service" category. The awards were presented recently at the GTB Telecoms Innovation & Technology Summit 2016 at the Sheraton Park Lane in London.
Mahindra Comviva, along with Airtel, received the award for their joint innovation in the field of Mobile NFC merchant payments. Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC Payments, powered by Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity Money and Nearex Technologies Xip solution, facilitates fast and seamless payments at merchant POS and also addresses key customer and merchant related adoption challenges. Airtel Money “Tap Tap” NFC Payments is the first-of-its-kind closed-loop NFC payments service that brings a paradigm shift in mobile money-based merchant payments, which so far, were only performed using USSD and SMS. By transitioning everyday merchant payments to digital medium, Airtel Money is helping Tanzania move to a cashless economy.
“Tap Tap is the next stage in the evolution of merchant payments in Tanzania. We have merged NFC technology with Airtel Money platform to ensure that the customers in Tanzania have a fast and seamless payments experience at merchants that are comparable to the developed world. With the ease and convenience of "tap and pay" payments delivered, we've enabled the right kind of ecosystem to onboard merchants like supermarkets, retail shops, bars, pharmacies, fuel stations to adopt the digital medium of payment. This is a revolution in the making because everyday merchant payments are much bigger than P2P payments and digitization brings all of them under the cashless umbrella,” said Aijaz Khan, Director Airtel Money at Airtel Tanzania.
“The GTB award motivates us to continue our focus on creating innovative digital payment propositions for the industry and encourages us to deliver value, convenience, and a secure alternative to cash for consumers and businesses alike. Our partnership with Airtel helps it to provide Airtel Money services that deliver value to all the stake holders in the financial ecosystem including customers, merchants, operators as well as promoting the economy and furthering inclusive growth,” said Christophe Erny, Head of Africa operations at Mahindra Comviva.
Airtel Money is one of the leading mobile money services in Tanzania with 5 million customers. By offering an array of mobile money services such as P2P transfer, bill payments, micro-loans, contactless merchant payments, bulk payments and airtime recharge, Airtel Money is digitizing payments in Tanzania and contributing to the vision of a cashless Tanzania.
Mobiquity Money delivers a host of mobile money services that transforms the way consumers save, borrow, transfer and spend money. It is designed to seamlessly integrate consumer touch points with a wide ecosystem of banks, billers, merchants and third-party payment systems, creating a convergence powered by interoperability. Apart from delivering convenience to consumers, the solution enables financial service providers to acquire new customers, create long-term loyalty with existing ones, and seize new revenue opportunities to increase their footprint in the market. mobiquity Money empowers financial service providers to be agile in their markets, with complete focus on the customers. mobiquity Money has clocked over 65 deployments in more than 45 countries. It powers three of the top 10 deployments globally and processes 200 million transactions every month amounting to $4 billion.
The GTB Innovation Awards honors innovative projects involving telecom operators and service providers around the world working in association with their vendors and suppliers. GTB Innovation Awards involve projects that showcase winning partnership between operators and vendors. |