Zain nominated for 2010 Global Mobil Award

Accra, Feb. 6, GNA - Zap, a service from the Zain Group of Communications, has been nominated for the 2010 Global Mobile Award at this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC), slated on Tuesday 16, 2010 in Barcelona. Zap is a service that enables Zain subscribers in Zap-enabled countries to use their mobile phone to withdraw cash or pay for goods and services, school fees and utility bills, including electricity and water. In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said the award which the first of it kind, sought to recognize innovative mobile banking services around the world that are pioneering the roll out of low-cost financial services for millions of people, where traditional financial services were not within their reach.

The award is also aligned to the GSMA's Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) an initiative, which was created to connect the unconnected and improve the social, economic and environmental well-being of the world's population living on less than US$2 a day, by supporting and encouraging the development of sustainable mobile money solutions. GSMA is an association of mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardizing, deployment of mobile telephony system.

It said the purpose of the GSMA's initiative is to accelerate the availability of mobile money services for financially underserved segments of society, in terms of speed of deployment, the achievement of scale and the creation of a variety of platforms - from individual platforms enabling cash transfers to the enabling of interoperable savings, credit and insurance services, for example.

The statement said the MMU Award category will recognise the mobile money service or application that had the most significant impact on unbanked customers in developing markets over the last year, and which supports the goals of the GSMA's MMU programme.