Tele2, a European telecommunications operator with about 34 million customers in 10 countries has released its financial preliminary results, showing that its mobile commerce business increased by 90% compared to the year before, contributing to revenues of 1.9 billion rubles (close to US$30 million). Tele2 which offers a range of mobile commerce services saw the total number of users for its mobile commerce services increasing by 35% during the same period to around 300,000 subscribers monthly.
According to Tele2, payments for mobile services accounted for most transactions (37%), money transfers were ranked second (24%) while top-ups of digital wallets took the third place (12%). Within the top-up segment, top-ups of up to 100 rubles accounted for 48% of the transactions while top-ups of up to 500 rubles made 38% of transactions. Tele2 also said that most mobile commerce transactions were USSD-based which accounted for 75% of total operations.
Tele2 mobile payment service includes Tele2 wallet for instant payment for goods and services, money transfers to transfer funds from mobile account in Russia and CIS to bank accounts, Tele2 MasterCard virtual card for secure Internet shopping and Autopay for automatic top-ups of mobile account from any bank card.
Roman Volodin, Chief Commercial Officer at Tele2
Mobile commerce is the fastest growing payment service on the Russian market. Tele2 is actively developing this promising direction. In 2014, mobile commerce turnover hit a record of 1.9 bn rubles. We created a secure and all-purpose payment tool based on the subscriber’s mobile account. We will continue its fine-tuning in order to offer our clients up-to-date mobile financial services.
