Uganda gets third mobile money service

Uganda Telecom has introduced M-Sente, its mobile money transfer platform, making it the third telco to offer mobile cash transfer services on the local market, after MTN's mobile money and Zain's Zap last year, reports New Vision Online

Using the phone handset to transfer money has revolutionised banking and financial transactions across the East African region since Safaricom's M-Pesa pioneered the service in Kenya.

Tesfai Menghistab, the chief technical officer, explained the M-Sente service is unique in that current subscribers do not have to swap their SIM cards because the mobile commerce system is connected to the Zain network and not onto the SIM card.

2010 may be the breakout year for mobile payments in North America, says CTV News.

Vince Kadar, president of Ottawa's Telepin, says: "The developing world runs on cash. That's how they do business but it has limits. There are about three-and-half billion cellphones in the world, only about one billion of us have bank accounts, what do the other two billion do? That's our market."

Telepin provides the software platform for phone carriers to provide a wide range of cell-based money services. Telepin doubled its client count in the past year, and signed a deal with Canada's Wind Mobile to provide mobile payments on a Wind account.

New user-friendly technology needs to be developed to help older people access modern banking methods, argue researchers behind a new government-sponsored project, reports The Engineer.

The team from Newcastle and York Universities are working with Barclays Bank to help the nearly 2.4 million people over the age of 80 in the UK become more comfortable with digital banking.

Their aim will be to develop assistive technology for older people who feel uneasiness with Internet banking or chip and pin cards. An even greater focus will be on members of the elderly community without a banking account.