Vesta E-Wallet Targets Unbanked, Prepaid Mobile Users (May 30, 2013)
May 30, 2013
Vesta Corp., an Atlanta-based electronic payments services provider with offices in Ireland and China, has teamed up with three firms to develop Vesta PayMobile, a white-label e-wallet to help MNOs provide financial services to their prepaid customers. The smartphone application will launch with, yet unnamed, major mobile operators in the U.S. in the second half of 2013, according to the company. Through partnerships with Xoom, PreCash and Prepaid.com, Vesta has added money transfer and bill payment capabilities and international top-up services to its reload platform.
“Vesta’s core platform provides account refill capabilities for prepaid mobile operators [and] we support refills through a variety of channels, including Web, phone and live agents, but more refills are now going through our mobile channels,” Josh Rush, Vesta vice president of marketing, tells Paybefore. “Adding the additional financial services is a natural extension of this refill application because customers are able to use their same account details to conduct these additional transactions.”
More than a quarter of American households were unbanked or underbanked in 2011, according to a report released last year by the FDIC. The study also indicates that more than 25 percent of households reported using within the last year alternative financial services, such as money orders, check cashing, remittances or payday loans.
Rush says the company envisions the program being made available to all, pre- and post-paid, mobile subscribers in the U.S. and abroad.
