Nokia Money existed in India and was historicallyin the past expected to roll out to other emerging markets.
Nokia today announced designs to close its mobile payment service known as Nokia Money in India, as part of a shift in strategy that the company will focus more on its handset business and related location-based services offerings. According to a spokesperson for the company, "the mobile business with financial services are not core to Nokia, so they are planning to leave the business."
For the reader, Nokia has money played first announced in August 2009 as a service that allowed users to send money to friends, merchants and service providers basically by their phone numbers. It was later introduced at the beginning of September at the Nokia World conference, and began to roll out to regional markets in 2010.
The news, reported by Reuters this morning, noting that Nokia only money was available all over India by the finish of last year, but had been heading in the right direction for further expansion.
The service was driven by Obopay, a company Nokia was the lead investor in, when it raised a $ 70 million round in early 2009. In contrast to efforts to generate a new smart rings in to digital wallets turn here in the United States was, according to Nokia Money-function mobile phone users in emerging markets, where lots of SIM cards, but have not paid for bank accounts in advance. The service allows the "unbanked," and those users in rural areas, an alternative means for goods and services in addition to using pay by money.
More recently, the mobile payments market is growing interest from credit card companies, mobile operators, know-how and even companies like Google (with its Google Wallet) and PayPal, all think that mobile payment may be giant business in the 'future as a consumer spread away from money and smartphones continues. In fact, there's now 130 deployments of mobile financial services worldwide, according to the GSMA, and 93 more in the works.
Nokia Money is not the only service to get the ax in the last few days. The company also announced earlier this month it was closing up its Ovi Share service, a web service, where Nokia hosted content online users. So far Nokia Life, the company has suite of knowledge services for emerging markets covering agriculture, health, schooling and entertainment, was spared.
The exit from the mobile payment business is a reflection of the new efforts of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to his position as a leading handset provider in the world who think about themselves quickly to changing smart rings, iPhone and Android devices. Nokia partnered with Microsoft to kill their own Symbian smartphone OS and Windows Mobile is now the top player in the world. However, it is so early in the race, it is not clear that Windows Mobile will even be able to establish itself as a third ecosystem in terms of mobile operating systems. It is an hard work that requires full attention from Nokia, and financial services were likely to be a great distraction from the battle.
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