Redknee today announced a deal with Bintel, a Bahrain-based telecom operator working in West Africa. Bintel has chose Redknee to provide specialised billing and mobile money solutions for it’s roll out in Gabon later this year.
The Redknee billing system handles both pre- and postpaid voice, data, and messaging. For the West African market, Redknee is providing the option of voucher-less prepaid minutes. It can be hard for customers in the large rural areas in West Africa to actually get to a shop where they can buy a physical voucher. This system will allow them to buy minutes directly via their mobiles from a local reseller.
Bintel is focusing a lot of it’s growth in West Africa. Already operating in the Central African Republic and Somaliland, Bintel is investing USD 250 million in the region. Gabon is just one of the areas it will be expanding into.
From the release:
“We are excited about Bintel’s selection of Redknee’s market-leading, turnkey converged billing solution. We look forward to a long-term, strategic partnership with the Bintel Group, and will support its success when services are launched in Gabon,” said Redknee CEO Lucas Skoczkowski. “At Redknee, we are continuing our investment in the high growth markets of Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific to support the execution of our growth strategy.”
“Redknee’s experience in meeting aggressive timelines and helping wireless operators attract underserved or unpenetrated segments with value-based pricing and service offerings were key in Bintel’s decision to deploy Redknee’s solutions,” said Alawi Baroum, Bintel’s CEO. “Redknee’s reputation for positively impacting and enhancing the subscriber experience and helping wireless operators drive revenue and profitability, especially in high growth markets, made Redknee the ideal partner for Bintel as we bring our customer-centered services to Gabon.”
What we think?
Wow, there was a lot of fluff in that release. It was seriously padded out, with about 95% PR-jargon and about 5% information. Still, that 5% is interesting stuff.
Basically, Redknee is trying to get around an interesting problem for mobile billing. In poorer rural areas, monthly bills might not suit local customers, there’s little or no web infrastructure, and getting to and from a shop where they resell prepaid minutes isn’t worth the effort. So mobile payments for pre-paid plans becomes the only real solution. Is it any wonder that Africa seems to be at the forefront of SMS banking?
