Smart reaches remote islands
Smart Communications Inc. has rolled out its mobile commerce services to almost 50 remote rural communities under its Island Activations Program (IAP), an initiative aimed to provide mobile-based financial services to remote communities that have limited or no access to banking services, it said in a press release.
Working with several micro-finance institution networks, Smart set up Smart Money Centers in remote, underserved Philippine communities, to spur entrepreneurial opportunities and economic growth.
These Smart Money Centers will allow island-based MFIs to perform money transfers using Smart Money, a reloadable payment card linked to a mobile phone.
Aside from mobile money transfers, the IAP enable island residents to perform e-load purchases, bill and utility payments and other micro purchases, all via mobile.
The program was piloted in 2008 in Polillo Island, Quezon Province when the island’s financial channels were cut off. The expansion of this program is being done in partnership with Seed Finance, a credit provider to MFIs and small enterprises and several MFI network organizations like MFI Councils in Mindanao.
Through Smart Money, MFIs are able to provide mobile-based financial services to about 200,000 households or close to 1.8 million Filipinos who inhabit the remote islands activated by Smart.
“The IAP has helped us position ourselves as a provider of enabling platforms that will help MFIs better serve their clients in even the most remote communities,” Danilo Mojica, head of Smart Wireless Consumer Division, said.
“We are proud to partner with Smart to reach out to poor, underserved markets,” Marcos Perez Jr., chief operating officer and managing director of SeedFinance Corp., said.
The IAP is funded by the GSM Association’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked Fund supported by a $12.5-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Inc.
In 2009, Smart was among the first four global operators and the only Philippine telecommunications company to receive an MMU Fund grant.*
