Tuesday, February 26, 2013

BlackBerry powers Indonesian mobile money initiative

Angel Dobardziev, customer insights analyst, Ovum

SPAIN: BlackBerry, Monitise, and the Indonesian financial institution PT Bank Permata today announced the launch of BBM Money in Indonesia. BlackBerry is the leading smartphone brand in Indonesia and its flagship messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger, is extremely popular, especially among younger consumers.

There is also a very large segment of unbanked and underbanked users in Indonesia. As a result, combining BlackBerry’s customer franchise, Monitise’s strong mobile money platform, and PT Bank Permata’s banking expertise looks like a winning partnership – but is it really?

We think the jury is out. There was little in the announcement on the agent network that will support the service other than the use of PT Bank Permata’s ATM network. As unbanked users typically cash in and cash out a lot when they first sign up to a mobile money service, a number of players have found it difficult to gain traction if an agent is not close by to help users send or receive transactions.

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