Before Transfer To, Eric co-founded Mobile 365, a global leader in mobile messaging interoperability, delivery and settlement of SMS and MMS content. He has been successively the Chief Technology Officer and the Vice President of the Person to Person Business Unit. Mobile 365 was acquired by Sybase in 2006. Previously, Eric held several positions in Philips, De La Rue and Oberthur. He holds a Master of Science.
The Paypers: TransferTo provides cross-border mobile airtime remittance. What determined your company to focus on this particular area of mobile money transfers?
Eric Barbier: Around the world more than 200 million people live outside their home country remitting over USD 300 billion every year. As the current remittance channels are inefficient for sending money amount below USD 10, these migrants lack appropriate solutions to send small gift back home. By reloading the prepaid mobile phone of their relatives, TransferTo offers expatriate workers an innovative service enabling an easy and cost effective cross border sending of value from USD 1 to USD 10.
The Paypers: How does mobile airtime remittance function? What is the principle behind it and who do you target (both in terms of geographical areas and in terms of demographics)?
Eric Barbier: The TransferTo network is interconnecting mobile operators’ prepaid users of the senders and receivers countries. By SMS or through a mobile client application, foreign workers can recharge the prepaid mobile phone of their relatives back home. Users simply need to indicate the recipient’s phone number and the amount they want to recharge. The transfer is processed in real time.TransferTo is targeting the ethnic segment of the mobile operators’ client base in countries with a large migrant population, like for example : the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia to name a few. Local users of the airtime service would be originating from the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Africa.
The Paypers: What kind of value do you provide for your customers? What benefits do they garner from using TransferTo’s services?
Eric Barbier: Our mobile operator clients are benefiting from a new offering catering for a high telecom spending population where no end user education is required. With user service retention in excess of 80%, a multiple monthly transfers pattern and a transaction based pricing model that favours volume business, we provide a strong value proposition to our clients. From an end users side, one can enjoy an easy-to-perform, real time and self-care service that brings great convenience in making repeated gifts to his/her love ones back home.
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