New Zealand-based currency exchange company KlickEx and Digicel, a Telecoms service provider, in partnership with VeriFone, a global leader in electronic payment technologies, last week announced the launch of a digital merchant payment system in the Kingdom of Tonga.
The service that facilitates mobile money transactions has since been dubbed Beep & Go does. It does not require the use of a bank account, a credit card or smart phone.
“A recipient can withdraw the funds in cash, pay utility bills, buy goods and services, buy or send ‘top up’ or keep the funds in their mobile wallet. The online service is available only in the UK,” Annie Smith, the head of Mobile Financial Services at Digicel Pacific told The Cleaner.
Digicel Pacific Limited, a mobile network operator across the Pacific and a division of the Digicel Group, deployed the VeriFone mWallet services and Near Field Communication or NFC-enabled payment systems to facilitate mobile money transactions, The Cleaner says.
Tonga Development Bank will however provide agent services for Digicel, and will offer deposits and withdrawals to Digicel Mobile Money users’ mobile wallet accounts.
The service will be available to all Tonga citizens whose numbers are over 105,000, regardless of whether they have a bank account, smartphone, credit card, or not.
To access the service, a customer has to register by providing the required information to meet the KYC – Know Your Customer, and AML and CFT – Anti Money Laundering & Combating the Financing of Terrorism guidelines, which are the internationally accepted standards in the financial services industry.
To carry out transactions on the platform, a user identifies the recipient’s mobile money account, which is their mobile phone number.
Once funds are received in the designated online account or retail agent, they are converted to the destination foreign currency at the prevailing foreign exchange rate and sent immediately to the recipient’s mobile money wallet account.
