Kumari Bank bagged the coveted mBillionth Award South Asia for its Kumari mobile cash product -- in the m-business and commerce, banking category -- in the mBillionth 2011 South Asia International Summit 2011 in New Delhi on Satyurday.
The mBillionth Award 2011 was a platform that recognised some of the key innovative applications and services and honoured excellence in the arena of mobile communications across South Asia.
India’s State union minister of Communications and IT Sachin Pilot was the chief guest of the summit.
Out of a total of more than 200 applications from across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, some 21 were selected as winners spread across 11 core categories, with Kumari Bank, the sole winner representing Nepal.
"The bank is extremely proud to have won this award for a product that has less than a year of life under its belt," said the bank's CEO Radhesh Pant.
"In a very short time span, the product has helped the bank break traditional barriers in providing access to finance to the poor and solve inherently burning issues in the domestic banking sector," he added.
With 70 per cent of the population yet to be tapped into formal banking, the bank believes that the promise echoed by the product, in improving access to sustainable financial resources, is real and achievable.
Pant mentioned that the summit sponsored by internationally acclaimed telecommunications giant Vodafone was deservedly an appropriate platform, not just for the bank to showcase its innovation, but also for Nepal to show the world that Nepal also has the capability to be recognised as an incubator for innovative minds.
"The award has served as an outlet for the bank to scale even greater heights in the days to come," he added.
The first of its kind, Kumari Mobile Cash pioneered the 'mobile wallet' concept in Nepal, which allows users to store cash balances in their mobile phones. Users are then able to deposit and withdraw cash from their mobile phones, and use the stored cash value for various purposes like remittance, bill payments, and airtime recharge, with the push of a few buttons. Currently, customers can avail of the service from anyone of Kumari Bank’s 29 branches or from its 189 authorised agents dispersed across the country.
The service was launched one year ago, in partnership with Leapfrog Technology Inc, an American firm based in Boston, MA, USA with a development centre in Nepal.
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