Orange and Airtel Federate Mobile Money Services

In the telecommunications business, interoperability or federation always is required to sustain a big or important product.

So it is that mobile money services operated by Orange and Airtel now have been federated, allowing customers of Orange Money in Côte d’Ivoire to use their mobile phones to send money to customers of Airtel Money in Burkina Faso, and vice versa.

That capability is said to be the first time Orange customers have been able to send money or receive money from people in a country outside the Orange mobile footprint.

Though remittances (sending money) drive activity in most of Africa, in Singapore mobile payments (e-commerce) is the driver.  

In the Asia Pacific region, top markets for conversation about mobile payments were India, Indonesia, Japan, Australia and China, MasterCard said.