Will develop a global mobile financial ecosystem to reach the unbanked

Barcelona, June 24 2009 – Roamware Inc, the San Jose, CA based leader in global roaming and interoperability solutions today confirmed a strategic partnership to develop mobile money applications and services with Grameen Solutions.

Part of the Grameen group of enterprises - which also includes Grameen Bank, the world’s leading micro-finance institution - Grameen Solutions is the flagship technology company and specialises in helping partners to develop new and sustainable business solutions and services.

Announcing the partnership and the program to roll-out an ecosystem of new applications and services, Roamware CEO Bobby Srinivasan said: “Roamware’s global roaming and interoperability ecosystem spans over 375 network operators in 138 countries, reaching more than 1.8 billion mobile users. The opportunity to roll out mobile financial services across our ecosystem of installations in partnership with Grameen will help deliver consistent, safe and reliable solutions on a global basis.”

Mobile financial services constitute a fast emerging market and a key developmental tool in many emerging markets.  Today, it is estimated that just over one billion people have access to traditionally structured banking services; meanwhile, the mobile market – with close to four billion users worldwide – can extend the reach of financial services to the “unbanked”.

Professor Muhammad Yunus, Founder of the Grameen Bank and Chairman of Grameen Solutions said: "Today, mobiles offer an unparallel platform for delivering innovative services in developing countries.  We believe our partnership with Roamware will make a positive impact on the lives of many people."

Kazi Islam, CEO of Grameen Solutions said: “This partnership will leverage our deep expertise and knowledge on challenges and solutions in developing countries and enhance lives of people by creating new and innovative services utilizing reach of mobile throughout the world.”
 
Roamware has a track record of pioneering solutions that solve interoperability issues across networks and enabling the seamless introduction of services across its roaming platform.

“The partnership with Grameen offers operators a best of breed approach,” said Srinivasan. “We will be able to quickly develop services using Grameen’s expertise, and deploy them using Roamware’s common platform.  We aim to make it easy for operators to roll-out services that will deliver mobile financial services to billions of people for the very first time.”