Oxigen ties up with Loop for international remittance via mobiles

Oxigen Services has signed a service agreement with mobile payment company Luup. The partnership will enable NRIs to send remittance to their relatives in India. Using this service, NRIs will also be able to top up mobile phones for their Indian relatives.
India is the largest receiver of remittances globally with more than $50 billion coming in annually from Indians overseas, of which approximately $25 billion comes from Gulf countries alone.
Oxigen will use Luup’s mobile money technology platform and services to run all of Oxigen’s bank-orientated mobile financial services, which will help its revenue to grow.
Speaking on the occasion, Pramod Saxena, managing director and chairman at Oxigen, said, “Oxigen’s new partnership with Luup is a major step forward in enabling unbanked and under-banked people in India to receive money from their earning family members overseas. Oxigen is continuing to leverage its retail footprint and payment solution software to bring greater convenience and cost savings to its customers.”
In addition, Luup will add all Oxigen services to its own portfolio of Mobile Branchless Banking and Mobile Remittance Solutions. The aim is to enable Indians living in other countries (starting with the UAE, which is a hub of Indian migrant workers,) to remotely top-up the mobile phones of their family members in India.
Through the partnership, Oxigen’s 75,000-strong retail network will become part of an extended local and international payments gateway. With this combined effort Oxigen can expand its business reach overseas with Luup’s international partners such as retail banks, exchange houses, payroll providers and money transfer organisations.
“The partnership with Oxigen is a key step in expanding Luup’s international payments gateway further,” explained Morten Hofstad, regional director, Luup. “We build multi-lateral distribution corridors for seamless, cost-effective and convenient international and domestic remittances. By signing up key partners from banks, exchange houses and payroll processors, we create gateways such as the one from the Gulf region to India – bringing vital new solutions to the Indian community.”
This partnership will simplify one of the biggest remittance corridors by offering easy and simple access to mobile money to about 400 million unbanked people across rural India, thus providing a push towards financial inclusion.
To bring the unbanked to the banking fold, overseas Indians can nominate a beneficiary. Oxigen will help the beneficiary to open a no frills bank account.
This new low cost mobile-based money transfer service will benefit Indian families who will now be able to receive money into the no frills account opened at Oxigen SBI banking kiosks in their neighborhood.
Oxigen is also talking to other banks to extend the services to their customers.