By Prince Osuagwu
As the past ten years has seen rapid spread of mobile phones across the world, making possible new, more cost-effective, more convenient and more secure ways of providing financial services to consumers, Ericsson Money Services, has launched the first of its numerous number of new mobile money services, across seven European countries
This means that with Ericsson Money, Mobile phone users in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Sweden can sign up from today at www.ericssonmoney.com to send and receive money to and from friends and family and withdraw cash.
Ericsson says that the launch was the first step towards bringing a full suite of convenient, cost-efficient, secure and instant mobile financial services to consumers globally.
According to the company, “as money transfers become more like mobile communication, our mobile phones will become central to not only our social lives, but also our financial lives. After easily creating a safe and secure mobile wallet online, users will be able access their money safely from the Ericsson Money network through their phones”.
A new ecosystem is emerging in the convergence of mobile and financial services. Mobile payments and person-to-person money transfers are forecasted to become some of the most-used mobile applications in many countries in the next two or three years.
Mobile money has been described to be a key driver for person-to-machine and machine-to-machine connections by 2020. Ericsson said that when it envisioned a world with more than 50 billion connected devices, it felt it has a significant role to play as these trends are realized.
Ericsson Money today is said to enable people to send and receive money instantly and withdraw cash. Parents can conveniently cater for their children at university or on their travels using the handset as the access point to their personal mobile wallet.
Also, transferring money to family and friends who are just around the corner, at a café, or even in a different country will now be as quick and easy as sending a text message.
Meanwhile, for consumers, the services will offer greater freedom of choice, access to money and a faster and more convenient way to share money with friends and family.