Business

Saturday October 3, 2009

Celcom to launch more m-commerce services


KUALA LUMPUR: Celcom (M) Bhd, which introduced Celcom Air Cash, a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data) based mobile money transfer service in June, is looking at launching more mobile commerce services in the near future.

Vice-president and head of broadband and business innovation, Kevin Henry, said the service had so far received good response from its subscribers.

Celcom Air Cash enables users to transfer money to other Air Cash users, remit money, reload airtime and make basic account enquiries.

Kevin Henry

“The trend is changing and people are willing to try the services especially in small denominations,” he said on the sidelines of the Forbes Global CEO conference.

Henry said currently Celcom subscribers could only remit money to Indonesia via its sister company PT Excelcomindo Pratama.

To a question, he said the company was in the midst of expanding the number of countries for its remittance services.

“Next week, customers will be able to remit money via their mobile phones to the Philippines,” Henry said, adding that Celcom had been conducting tests in the Philippines over the past few weeks.

He said the money would be remitted to mobile operator Globe Telecom users via G-cash and G-remit for other mobile subscribers.

“We are also looking at expanding our remittance services to Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Singapore,” Henry said, adding that Celcom was also in the midst of setting up a hub for its mobile commerce services.

He said the hub would benefit Celcom in the long term.

“We have not awarded the project to set up a hub yet. We are going through a tendering process,” Henry said, adding that the setting up of the hub could take three to six months.

On new services, he said the company would introduce them in phases as it did not want to “shock customers” with technology.

Celcom, he said, was looking forward to introducing a utilities payment service and the purchase of transportation tickets via mobile phone.

“These are the things regular people use. It is not a high value transaction and the risk is very minimal,” Henry said.

Currently, Air Cash transactions are kept to a maximum of RM1,500 but Celcom has already received Bank Negara approval to increase the limit.

On its investment for the setting up of such services, Henry said it was “a very small amount” and that “it’s hardly a dent in the pocket for any mobile operator.”

He expects mobile payment to experience exponential growth in two years similar to the take-up rate of mobile broadband.

To a question, he said he was unperturbed that other local operators might jump on the bandwagon.

“I’ll be happy if they (mobile operators) decide to start offering such services as it will enable our subscribers to send money to users from other operators as well,” he said. “I hope they will catch up fast and start offering their services next year. Maxis Communications Bhd has expressed interest and we’re currently in talks with them.”

He said Celcom was fortunate to have Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase Inc, as its technology partner.

Sybase provide mobile messaging and mobile commerce services.

Sybase 365 mCommerce vice-president Matthew Talbot said the mobile phone acted on activation devices for financial transactions.

“It’s just another form of payment and can be used on all phones,” he said, adding that mobile payment was one of its top three initiatives.

“The system and technology is scalable for future expansion. It is also cost effective for mobile operators,” he said.

Talbot said the USSD technology “is very similar to SMS but it’s more secure.”

He said the USSD technology had been in use in Austria for seven years and was widely used to pay for taxi fare, parking, vending machines and at retail outlets.

Some mobile operators saw the introduction of mobile payment as a means of arresting the falling average revenue per user of telcos, he said, adding that there was still room for growth in mobile payment services. — By LEONG HUNG YEE

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