UAE -based telco Etisalat seeks to expand its mobile financial
services within the region by taking advantage of the large
expatriate population in the Gulf area.
The expatriate community living
in the UAE reached 8.26m last year, representing a 88.5% of the
UAE’s combined population, according to figures by the
National Bureau of Statistics.
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Etisalat reported $1.8bn worth of mobile remittances via money
transfers last year.
“Remittances are a huge business opportunity. We do not need
bricks and mortar branches, so our costs are lower and we can pass
on this saving and offer better exchange rates and transaction
fees,” Etisalat’s director of products and services George Held
told Reuters.
Held added that Etisalat will focus on its home market and Saudi
Arabia. Both countries have large expat populations and incoming
remittances were worth about $36bn combined in 2010, Held
explained.
Out of the 27.1m people in Saudi Arabia, around one third are
expats, according to a report by the Public Statistics and
Information Department from last year.
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By GlobalDataEtisalat has recently signed a deal with Western Union and
MoneyGram to allow P2P m-money transfers from the Middle East
towards anywhere in the world, Reuters reported.
“We want to introduce mobile money in the rest of our markets as
soon as possible. It is not a technical issue, but ticking all the
boxes from a regulatory, compliance and customer education point of
view,” Held said.
