[PHNOM PENH POST]
Refresh Mobile yesterday announced the purchase of mobile banking outfit
WING from Australia’s ANZ, although the amount of the deal was not
released.
WING will join Refresh’s stable of electronic payment
and cell phone top-up services, in addition to soon offering overseas
mobile remittance capabilities, Refresh executive director Ian Watson
said yesterday.
He added that WING had appealed to Cambodians without bank accounts, who represented the vast majority of the population.
“Our plan is to bank the unbankable,” he said. “We want to be the partner of choice for all consumers in Cambodia.”
WING would not rebrand to Refresh Mobile, Watson said.
WING,
a subsidiary company established by ANZ in 2009, allows users to
transfer money and make payments via their mobile phones. Workers in
Phnom Penh often use the service to remit money to their families in the
provinces.
According to officials at Refresh and ANZ, WING is
the Kingdom’s largest mobile banking service by subscriber numbers, with
more than 350,000 users.
Stephen Higgins, the chief executive of
ANZ Royal Bank, a joint venture by ANZ and Cambodia’s Royal Group, said
the Australian bank’s focus on the corporate market and upper-end
retail customers had prompted the sale of WING.
“WING is a great
business, but it actually sits outside this strategy,” he said. “So ANZ
went through a process to see if there was a more natural owner for
WING.”
ANZ had set up the service as a banking option for those
who were traditionally outside the banking market, such as garment
workers, Higgins added. He declined to put a figure on the deal, citing a
confidentiality agreement.
Refresh’s Watson claimed the
acquisition had made his company the Kingdom’s largest mobile banking
provider. Competition in the sector was limited, he said.
Cambodia’s
only other provider of mobile banking was ACLEDA Unity, which has about
45,000 subscribers, ACLEDA Bank executive vice-president So Phonnary
said yesterday.
Demand for the service had grown since Unity opened in 2009, So Phonnary said.
“It’s very important for them to have a bank in their pocket,” she told the Post.
Unity
appeals largely to ACLEDA customers, as the mobile service connects
directly with the comp-any’s banking system, according to So Phonnary.
She claimed that Unity and WING were not in direct competition with each other.
Cellcard, the Kingdom’s second-largest mobile provider by subscriber numbers, provides a similar service called Cellcard Cash.
According
to the Cellcard website, the service can be used to add money to
Cellcard accounts, as well as to pay bills and transfer money to other
Cellcard users.
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