Wednesday March 10 2010

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SMART, Seed Finance partner to launch inter-island mobile money solution

Leading wireless services provider, Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART) has collaborated with SEEDFINANCE Corporation, a provider of wholesale credit to Filipino microfinance institutions and small enterprises, to equip island-based microfinance institutions with mobile-based financial products and technologies that will allow them to send and receive funds using SMART mobile phones.

Dubbed as the Islands Activation Program, the initiative will utilize Smart Money as a fast and secure alternative to send and receive funds in islands or areas where there is little or no access to formal financial services, and will benefit members of close to a hundred microfinance institutions in various parts of the Philippines.

The program comes at the heels of the successful launch of the Smart Money Center in Polillo Island in 2008. In October 2008, the Polillo Group of Islands found its financial channels to the mainland cut off. The only rural bank went bankrupt, while the National Telecommunications Center ceased its telegraphic transfer operations in the area. The nearest bank, located in the Philippine mainland, was three hours away by boat.

SMART partnered with the island’s leading cooperative, Rhudarda Multipurpose Cooperative, to unveil the first Polillo Smart Money Center, which allowed residents to send and receive cash in an instant without having to experience long boat rides to the mainland, complex service charges and remittance delays. The fast and secure mobile-initiated fund transfers in Polillo now take place at the speed of a text message and are made possible via the award-winning Smart Money platform. This same remittance model will be rolled out in key provinces of Visayas and Mindanao under the Islands Activation Program.

Since 2000, SMART has been actively promoting the use of mobile-based financial services and microfinance solutions, through the revolutionary Smart Money—the world’s first electronic cash card linked to a mobile phone. Through Smart Money, SMART subscribers are able to conduct mobile banking, electronic money transfers, micro-purchases and micro-payments with just a few clicks on a cellular phone with a SMART SIM. In September 2008, Smart Communications, Inc. was the only Philippine Company to receive a World Business and Development Award given by the International Chamber of Commerce, Prince of Whales International Business Leaders Forum and United Nations Development Programme. Smart’s core business and programs, including its MFI Program initiatives, were cited for changing the way Filipinos communicate and for addressing the needs of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP).

Posted on November 6, 2009
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