Mahindra Comviva and Airtel Tanzania awarded GTB Innovation Award for “Tap Tap” NFC Merchant Payments
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – June 06, 2016: Mahindra Comviva , the global leader in providing mobility solutions, and Airtel Tanzania , one of the leading telecom provider in Tanzania, 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.
Commenting on the achievement, Aijaz Khan, Director Airtel Money at Airtel Tanzania, said “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.”
Accepting the award, Christophe Erny, Head of Africa operations at Mahindra Comviva, said: “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.”
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.
About Mahindra Comviva
Mahindra Comviva is the global leader of mobility solutions catering to The Business of Tomorrows. The company is a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra and a part of the $16.9 billion Mahindra Group. Its extensive portfolio of solutions spans mobile finance, content, infotainment, customer value management, messaging, mobile data and managed VAS services.
It enables service providers to enhance customer experience, rationalize costs and accelerate revenue growth. Mahindra Comviva’s solutions are deployed by over 130 mobile service providers and financial institutions in over 90 countries and enrich the lives of over a billion people to deliver a better future. In January 2016, the company acquired a controlling stake in Advanced Technology Solutions (ATS), a leading provider of mobility solutions to the telecom industry in Latin America to strengthen its in-region presence. For more information, please visit www.mahindracomviva.com
About Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 357 million customers across its operations at the end of March 2016. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com