Mi-Pay Expands GlobalTopup Service in India

Date: 30/4/2009

MI-PAY EXTENDS GLOBALTOPUP SERVICE IN INDIA

Fastest Growing Cellular Market Drives Demand For Remote Topup
By Non-resident Workers, Travellers & Expats 

30 April 2009 - Mi-Pay has extended its Globaltopup service to include India’s top five major cellular operators - which cover up to 89% of the sub-continent’s cellular subscribers.  The news follows a recent announcement by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, confirming India as the fastest growing cellular market in the world.

Globaltopup (www.globaltopup.com) will appeal to those with family, friends or colleagues - travelling, working or living in India - who want to ensure that they have access to mobile airtime, whatever their location or circumstances. 

“With over 391 million mobile subscribers and 13 mobile operators, India is ripe for mobile service deployment.” According to Norman Frankel, CEO of Mi-Pay, “With 25 million Indians living and working abroad, it has one of the world’s highest international remittance figures.  This indicates a large base of non-residents regularly helping those financially back home.  We believe they will welcome the ability to provide vital cellular airtime to their relatives through our Globaltopup service.”

Frankel is quick to point out that demand will not be restricted to non-resident Indians.  “There are large numbers of expatriate US, Canadian, and European citizens based on the Indian sub-continent.  It is also a popular destination for gap-students, international travellers and cultural visitors.  Indeed, tourism looks set to boom when India hosts the Commonwealth Games in 2010.  With our service, all of these groups will be able to benefit from easier access to mobile services facilitated via top-ups from family, friends or employers based abroad.”  

Easy to use and secure, Globaltopup allows registered customers in one country to buy airtime topups for people in different countries via the Internet.  All that is needed are the country, operator and recipient’s mobile number.  Users simply choose from the topup amounts available, and the cost is given in the local currency at the prevailing exchange rate. Once the transaction is confirmed, Mi-Pay collects the payment and processes the topup immediately. Mi-Pay’s Globaltopup service now supports the following mobile operators in India; Vodafone, Airtel, Reliance, BSNL, Idea and Aircel. This includes the top five largest operators by subscriber numbers.  To do so it has overcome many of the challenges associated with delivering an international remittance service from overseas.   

Frankel explains, “Although operators are extending their reach into less populated and rural communities, the market is still very fragmented and often divided into geographic “calling circles”. Each operator has a number of regional operations, each of which sells its own range of topup products, and has its own technical infrastructure.  Mi-Pay is able to integrate with this complex infrastructure and offer customers a simple, easily understandable interface irrespective of location.” 

Outside India, Mi-Pay has signed international airtime deals with airtime distributors and mobile operators in over thirty countries, and is rolling out these operators in the next few months. As well as selling services via its own Globaltopup portal, Mi-Pay provides the portal as a full ‘white-labelled’ service for MVNOs, operators and financial institutions wishing to offer international mobile topup services using their own brands.