Comviva Joins MasterCard's Mobile Money Partnership Program

Mobile app and value added services company Comviva has announced a strategic partnership with MasterCard to launch what it calls a first-of-its-kind open loop Mobile Money Partnership Program. Under this partnership Comviva and MasterCard will enable their customers to gain access to all major financial services on their mobile phones. Sybase 365 and Utiba are the other platform providers that have joined the partnership program.

Through the Mobile Money Partnership Program, consumers will be able to have virtual card accounts that can be used for e-commerce payments with a user's mobile money account. Additionally, person-to-person payments between subscribers of two different mobile money services and face-to-face or remote payments using mobile phones for goods and services at merchants that do not have traditional POS acceptance will become possible.

"Comviva was a key partner of choice to empower billions of underserved segments in the developing market," said Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive, Mobile, MasterCard Worldwide.

Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Asia will be the key geographies targeted in this program.

Formed in 1999, Comviva develops mobile value added services products and applications which are deployed by mobile operators and service providers. It is backed by Westbridge Capital, Sequoia Capital, Cisco Systems and Bharti Group which also owns majority stock in the company. The company was earlier called Bharti Telesoft and was re-branded as Comviva two years ago.