Objectives

• Create the mobile payments services brand for the Middle East
  - Bank and cash transactions
  - Multi-language and currency
  - Easy to use
  - Extensible and future-proofed

Why Macalla

• Unrivalled expertise and experience in the payments, mobile operator and technology domains
• Award-winning Macalla Platform software
• Blue-chip customer references
• Focus on Middle East region

Results

• Direct top-up and bill payment live in Kuwait
• Excellent service take-up
• Brand loyalty
• Backing from leading banks and operators
• Basis for other in-market and cross-border services

Background
Mpay is the mobile payments service brand of leading Kuwaiti company Al Bahar Telecom and is designed to deliver a full suite of mobile services including top-up, bill pay and banking.

Goals
Al Bahar is a long established provider of telecom products and services throughout the Middle East. The company's primary goal in establishing Mpay was to utilise its industry reputation and create the mobile brand for banked and cash transactions in the region. Essential to achieving this goal is having a strong and committed partner and best of breed software - Macalla Roamware and its Macalla Platform software.

Results

Mpay is live in Kuwait since 2006 in Arabic and English. Its top-up service allows subscribers on the Zain (formerly known as MTC Vodafone) network to re-charge their prepay mobile phones and those of others (e.g. parents/children, employers/employees) directly from their own mobile phones. Top-up credit is applied within seconds. Subscribers pay using their nominated bank account. This removed the costs and inefficiencies inherent with traditional channels like e-vouchers and scratch cards and has brought unrivalled convenience, ease of use and security to its subscribers. The Mpay bill pay service allows postpaid subscribers to settle their postpaid bills from their mobile using their debit card as the source of payment funds. It also allows both pre- and postpaid subscribers to settle postpaid bills of buddies (e.g. parent-to-child, employer-to-employee etc).

Future solutions
Other Mpay solutions to be deployed in the coming months include extending coverage to more countries, and adding traditional/m-wallet based banking and cross-border transfers.