Good.bee company, member of Erste Group, together with BCR will jointly launch a new mobile banking service targeting also the unbanked population across the country.
“We expect to operate approximately 700 retail units by yearend and 100,000 subscribers. The sales force will be coordinated via eight regional centers, located in eight major cities in the country”, said the managing director of good.bee Romania, Sorin Bulai (photo).
Bulai expects some 1.3 million banking transactions in 2009.
“Consumers may still be reticent to these services, hence the transactions could be lower at first”, he added.
The mobile phone-based money transfers will be processed via BCR’s IT platform. In order to benefit of these services, the subscribers must have an account at BCR, while cards attached to the accounts are co-branded BCR.
The initial investment amounted to over 1.5 mln euros, while the common capital equates roughly 6 mln lei.
The reason for launching this service is the huge potential of this service in Romania, considering that over 8 million individuals aged between 15 and 55 don’t have access to basic banking services, as well as the high penetration rate of mobile telecommunications.
After taking root in Romania, “we plan to launch good.bee Mobile Transactions in other European markets, especially in the countries where Erste group is present,” said Sava Dalbokov, CEO of good.bee.
Buying the Start Pack, the customers will have access to a current account at BCR, chip-embedded debit card Visa Electron, and will be able to securely make various transactions directly from their mobile phone, such as money transfer, view account balance, or recharge the mobile phone card.
good.bee Mobile Transactions can be used from any type of mobile phone, without any prior installation or internet access. The mobile transaction service wa
