Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Visa tackling mobile accounts in developing markets with Orange

By | March 1, 2012, 1:15am PST

Summary: Orange Money customers in the Middle East and Africa will be able to use Visa prepaid accounts for retail and e-commerce purchases as well as for ATM withdrawals and other Visa-relatead payments.

Visa continues to announce major partnerships and mobile commerce initiatives amid Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona this week.

The latest partner is Orange. Visa has announced that Orange Money customers in Africa and the Middle East will soon have access to Visa prepaid account features inside their Orange Money accounts.

These customers will be able to use the prepaid accounts for retail and e-commerce purchases as well as for ATM withdrawals and other Visa-relatead payments.

More notably, this represents a significant step for Visa in its expansion to bring mobile payment solutions to consumers in developing markets.

The service will be available in seven countries across Africa and the Middle East, and it will accessible by more than 30 million subscribers.

Earlier this week, Visa announced separate partnerships with Vodafone and Intel at the start of MWC 2012. With Vodafone, the two will co-develop a Vodafone-branded proposition that will be offered to consumers across Vodafone’s customer base across more than 30 countries. Based on its prepaid account services, Visa will support the payment network and functionality.

With Intel, the two enterprises have entered into a multi-device, multi-year agreement to develop mobile commerce solutions for Intel Atom-based smartphones and tablets.

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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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