Sofrecom: Orange Money architect
Since its launch three years ago, the Orange Money mobile payment service, of the France Telecom-Orange group, has experienced resounding success in Africa. Sofrecom has actively participated in this success by supporting the operator’s various corporate entities and subsidiaries throughout the value chain.
Mobile payment: an area of major development for Orange in Africa
France Telecom-Orange, for all of the countries in which it is established, and particularly in Africa and the Middle East, creates innovative solutions to support local development. Among them, Orange Money plays a key role in the strategy of the French operator on the African continent.
This solution which consists of managing electronic money via mobiles, enables local populations to access a broad array of services, from the most basic (money transfer, purchase of telephone credit and payment of invoices) to the most advanced (insurance and savings offers).
Orange Money is a comprehensive and innovative solution for managing electronic money using a mobile terminal that lets customers make transactions, basic banking operations (money transfer, purchase of telephone credit and payment of invoices) and advanced operations (insurance and savings offers) in safety. The potential of such services is very high in Africa, where bank account holders represent less than 10% of the population, while more than half of the population has a mobile phone.
The Orange Money service aims at all Orange customers, and particularly people on low income or living in rural or isolated areas, excluded from the banking system.
Orange, positioning itself as an essential player in economic development, contributes to consolidating its brand image, and retaining customers in a multi SIM context with high rates of churn.
Sofrecom contributes to the design and implemen-tation of Orange Money
To date, Orange Money is available in eight African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Madagascar, Niger, Kenya, Botswana and Cameroon) and should be launched in all Orange AMEA countries by the end of 2012. Among the dynamic strengths of the core program, Sofrecom experts are strongly involved upstream of the projects, but also operationally in the deployment of the service in the countries. Sofrecom supports the Orange group to increase the speed and responsiveness in launching innovative services.
Upstream, Sofrecom supports the France Telecom-Orange Technocentre teams to carry out strategic, qualitative and quantitative marketing research, helps to come up with market opportunities, as well as defining product’s targeting and services that meet customers’ expectations.
Sofrecom, due to its international expertise, plays an essential role at the local level, in the analysis of the regulatory context, definition of economic models and partnerships to be set up in each country. In this way it has also largely contributed to drafting the framework agreement between France Telecom-Orange and all of the partner banking institutions.
To optimize the deployment of Orange Money, Sofrecom has also contributed to defining the optimized and generic business process, i.e. easily adoptable by the various subsidiaries of France Telecom-Orange in the region. These business processes have been integrated in Mobinil in Egypt, Orange Uganda and Orange Kenya.
Sofrecom, after launching the service, supports Orange subsidiaries in the structuring of their Orange Money distribution networks and in training their field staff. Sofrecom also helps compile strategic files, for example on the optimization of the partnership model in Senegal.
Sofrecom helps Orange with business guidance of the activity, defining objectives and sharing best practices between countries, to build a winning strategy in the long term.
Orange Money achieves its objectives
Orange Money is a genuine success in Africa with nearly 3 million customers. France Telecom-Orange has already achieved a large part of its pre-determined societal and sales objectives. In Senegal, Orange Money has overtaken its competitor, Western Union, in the space of two years. The operator has the ambition to expand its service to all the countries in which it is established in Africa and the Middle East.
Sofrecom, thanks to this success, has become a key partner for the French operator’s various corporate entities and subsidiaries. The partnership between the two companies is thus called on to continue the long term development and deployment of Orange Money in the AMEA area.
Today, Sofrecom’s expertise is clearly acknowledged which allows it to play a role throughout the «mobile payment» value chain. Its know-how thus enables it to support telecom operators and banking institutions wishing to deploy their own solutions
