Guyana Telephone and Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) subscribers can now send and receive cash and pay bills from their mobile handsets with the launch of the company’s ‘Mobile Money’ service and new CEO Radha Krishna Sharma said last evening that it will revolutionise financial transactions in Guyana.
“Synergy derived from complementary technology has allowed a mobile handset to have applications to allow for its functioning as a wallet… today the issue is no longer access to mobile phones but what can be done with a phone,” Sharma said at the launch of the service at the Pegasus Hotel, where he noted the technological strides made over the years that have led to the intersection banking and mobile telecommunications.
Sharma opined that the mobile phone has the potential and scope of being the currency of choice since it eliminates the need to carry around large amounts of cash, using debit or credit cards and is also time-saving. The latter benefit, he pointed out, is what most customers want and he explained that transactions could be made at any hour of the day from almost any number of locations. “‘Mobile Money’ as a means of exchange will break down financial walls and change the very concept of money in the process and allow for greater financial inclusion and that too at a much lower cost,” he said.
Managing Director of Mobile Money Eshwar Thakurdin noted that customers using their existing GT&T mobile phone can now do a number of transactions that they would have previously conducted at banks or other agencies. “…You can buy C-point, pay bills which is GT&T, GPL and IPED loans and send and receive money,” he explained, while noting that rival network Digicel’s customers can also benefit from the services, albeit solely to receive money. “We have not neglected the Digicel customer so they too can receive money… once you would have signed up you can send any amount of money and [it] will cost from $20 to $60 up to amounts of $60,000,” he said.
Withdrawals will also attract fees. For up to $2000, charges of $200 would be incurred, while for withdrawals from $2000 to $10,000 will incur a fee of $250 and those between $10,000 and $60,000 would see a fee of $500 charged. Any amount that exceeds $60,000, would cost the customer 1% of that amount, he said.
From R.A.S.H Communications in Lethem, Super Value General Store at Bath Settlement in Berbice to the IPED sub offices in Kumaka and Port Kaituma, customers can visit any of the company’s 60 vendors across the country and do transactions. The company will use the services of the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) as its cash facilitator.
Guyana is the first country in which GT&Ts parent network ATN chose to implement the service, President of International Operations Paul Bowersock informed at the launch last evening.
He told Stabroek News that this country was chosen after strategic investment studies indicated that it was feasible. While he would not go into details about the amount invested in the venture, because of it being privileged company information, he did say that it was significant capital.
“We felt like the opportunities worked best with the very many remote areas and many unbanked customers—a large unbanked population, that made the most sense in terms of the demographics—that would use and see value in this product, the type of terrain, the remote areas of the country the ability of folks to use money and a very high mobile phone population. The penetration is high,” he said.
Bowersock added that the facilitating bank, GBTI also serves to benefit not only from transactions fees made when customers use the service but also by reaching potential customers.
Thakurdin agreed. “What they get is the customer base, the traffic and the reputation from partnering with a service likes this… what this allows GBTI to do is to reach a broader base,” he said.
GT&T’s acting Chief Financial Officer Sonita Jagan had said earlier this year that the company was excited to bring to Guyanese a service that is already used in many countries around the globe.
Jagan had explained that the new system is expected to be implemented before April and agreements have already been made with the other utility companies—GPL and GWI—as well as with IPED for mobile money payments.
Explaining how the system will work and its similarity to that of an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card, Jagan said, “You got the technology now on the phone itself where your phone actually becomes your wallet. So, it’s not only about having your phone with credit, as we like to say in Guyana, it’s now where you can have cash. You can go to any of our agents and you can actually deposit cash in your phones.”
She described how the service will come in handy for persons in the hinterland who have difficulty getting money to their families on the coastland. “One of the big things is that you can actually do local money transfers and this is how it started because you had people working in the urban areas wanting to send money to their families in the rural areas. I think in Guyana’s case it will be [the] opposite, where people in the gold mining areas will want to send money to the urban areas,” she said.
“You can go and I guess change an ounce of gold with the person in Mahdia and put the money on your phone and just send that money to the phone number of your family,” she explained.
Additional information about the service can be found at its website at www.mmg.co.gy or by calling 0664 from any GT&T phone.
