Dundalk, Ireland — May 21, 2013 — Vesta Corporation, a leader in mobile payment solutions, announces the availability of the Vesta PayMobile™ wallet, a smartphone application that enables mobile operators to offer core financial services to their prepaid customers. Powered by partnerships with leading consumer brands Xoom, PreCash and Prepaid.com, the app builds on Vesta’s core account reload platform to include money transfer, bill payment and international top-up services. By leveraging a customer’s top-up account details, the combined experience delivers an easier to use, more cost-effective solution than retail-based alternatives.
There are 68 million unbanked and under-banked consumers in the U.S. and the majority of these are prepaid mobile subscribers, according to the FDIC. These consumers regularly use alternative financial services, which today are almost entirely cash-and retail-based. By offering the Vesta PayMobile wallet, mobile network operators (MNOs) can enable their prepaid customers to conduct mobile commerce and access critical banking services through their smartphones.
“The unbanked and under-banked opportunity in developed markets is often overlooked,” says Guillermo Escofet, senior analyst at research firm Informa Telecoms & Media. “Mobile-wallet efforts in this market have so far been largely focused on isolated money transfer corridors between specific mobile networks and specific countries. Likewise, in the postpaid-dominated US mobile market, prepaid subscribers are a sector often neglected by US mobile operators.”
“Informa estimates that the mobile prepaid top-up market will be generating global annual service revenues of US$56.8 billion by the end of 2016 and the international mobile money transfers market will be generating global annual service revenues of US$13.2 billion.”
The Vesta PayMobile wallet will launch with major mobile operators in the U.S. in the second half of 2013 and will include pre-integrated services from:
Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM), a digital money transfer provider, focused on helping consumers send money in a secure, fast and cost-effective way. Prepaid mobile subscribers will be able to sign up for the Xoom service directly from their smartphone and send money to friends and family in Latin America, the Philippines, India, Europe, Australia and South Africa.
PreCash, a leading provider of expedited bill payment services. Through this partnership, Vesta integrated PreCash’s mobile and online bill pay platform into the wallet. This provides users the ability to pay more than 10,000 bills in the United States with cash or cards using their smartphone. Additionally, users can add cash to their wallet at over 50,000 retail locations nationwide.
Prepaid.com, one of the leading online services for international top-up. With support for over 78 mobile operators in 39 countries, Prepaid.com enables the gifting of airtime credits to friends and relatives abroad.
“Unlike many of the other mobile wallet solutions on the market, the Vesta PayMobile wallet is truly solving the needs for prepaid wireless subscribers,” said Joshua Rush, vice president of marketing at Vesta. “We envision this application growing to eventually include a broad portfolio of services and m-commerce capabilities for all mobile subscribers.”
The Vesta PayMobile wallet builds on Vesta’s core prepaid top-up platform — a white label service used by mobile operators around the world. Because the wallet is integrated with Vesta’s payments-as-a-services (PaaS) platform, MNO partners can quickly brand and launch a mobile wallet that is easily integrated into their billing, accounting and customer care systems.
Customer payments processed via the wallet are protected by Vesta’s industry-leading fraud and security platform that is processing over $4B in mobile payments transaction volume today.
About Vesta Corporation
Headquartered in North America, with operations in Europe and China, Vesta is a pioneer and worldwide leader in electronic payment solutions. Vesta has established long-term, successful relationships with leading mobile operators including AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, Cricket Communications, O2 (Telefonica), Sprint, T-Mobile USA, Telcel, Verizon and Vodafone; major retail brands including Burger King, Redbox and Whole Foods; and financial institutions including Bank of China, Bank of Ireland, Chase Paymentech, Green Dot, and NetSpend.
