Less than a week after Claro and Bradesco announced their m-payment platform, Telefónica and MasterCard held a press conference yesterday in São Paulo to present a similar solution with the same goal: to include Brazilians without bank accounts in the financial system, using a prepaid mobile account.
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The solution, still without a brand name, will be launched this coming April in five cities with a nationwide roll out planned later in the year. “We aim to attract 200,000 clients and achieve a half million transactions per month by the end of 2013,” said Marcos Etchegoyen, president of MFS Serviços de Meios de Pagamentos Ltd., the joint venture of Telefónica’s Brazilian unit, Vivo, and MasterCard.
Telefónica entered the mobile payment market in January last year, when the company closed a commercial partnership with MasterCard focused on Latin America. While MFS will only serve Brazil, the two companies have another joint venture, Wanda, focused on other Latin American countries.
In May, Wanda launched services in Argentina, eyeing the county’s millions of wireless users who don’t have bank accounts. At the time of the announcement, a Wanda spokesperson expected the company to reach approximately 10 million transactions by the end of 2012.
The MFS solution targets low income Brazilians, prepaid mobile subscribers and people who do not have bank accounts. It is a prepaid service. Customers will be able to recharge credits on their mobile phone and transfer money to other people who also have the m-payment service. Customers will also receive a physical card allowing them to shop and withdraw cash at ATMs (automatic teller machines).
According to Etchegoyen, currently the companies are conducting trials of the solution and defining its parameters, including maximum and minimum transaction amounts.
