Ooredoo Qatar’s Mobile Money Payroll Service Sees Growth

Mobile Ooredoo Qatar announced that its Ooredoo Money Payroll service is experiencing rapid growth. Over 150,000 employees currently use the service, which has been used to pay more than QAR 3 billion (US $817 million) to employees since its launch in 2015. Each month, over QAR 115 million (US $31.3 million) is paid to employees across Qatar, directly into their Ooredoo Money Wallets, via Ooredoo Money Payroll.

Mobile money achieved prominence as a way of providing access to liquidity to unbanked users or those who were underserved by traditional financial institutions. Its core functionality was peer-to-peer payments among individuals. In the last several years, we have seen mobile money expand tremendously beyond its original conception.

For one thing, it has flourished in markets that are more developed than those of sub-Saharan Africa, where it grew fastest. Qatar, a wealthy country, is a good example. Of course, it should be pointed out that in certain Gulf states, mobile money is especially appreciated by foreign workers who remit funds home to family, and this demographic does bear similarities to the underbanked in less developed economies.

Secondly, it has come to be used widely even by those who do have access to banks and other financial services, mainly because it is perceived as convenient and seamless. In some cases, the integration of mobile money with other mobile services from operators has proved an incentive in itself for users to adopt it.

In this case, with Ooredoo Qatar, we are seeing large enterprises adopting mobile money as a means to pay their employees. The operator evidently perceived correctly that this would be a boon to both parties, considering its rapid growth and the sheer volume of payments being made currently. Once users are comfortable with the concept of mobile money, there is apparently no impediment to getting them to accept payroll payments through this means. And for the companies that are issuing the payments, the attendant costs must be low enough in comparison to banks’ systems to make it worthwhile. In Qatar, it is likely that a large percentage of the employees who participate are immigrants or expats who already appreciate the functionalities of Ooredoo’s mobile money platform, Ooredoo Money.

For the operator, mobile money payroll is an excellent, innovative way to expand its reach and increase revenue while shoring up loyalty both from individual users and from large corporations. The size of the corporate partners and the number of payments being issued make this a truly impressive revenue growth opportunity.

On a related note, Ooredoo Qatar is now promoting Ooredoo Money with an offer running through 31 December that gives a free data bundle of 750 MB to any customer who makes an international transfer of QAR 1001.00 (US $272.60) or more. The free data is valid for five days. and above using Ooredoo Money will enjoy 750 MB of free data valid for five days and can also be used in selected countries including India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

Tarifica is the global leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing. Covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe, Tarifica’s databases of mobile and fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance.  

To learn more about Tarifica, please visit www.tarifica.com 

Ooredoo Qatar Offers International Top-Ups for Third-Party Mobile, Data, and TV Services

Operator Ooredoo Qatar has debuted a new feature for its Ooredoo Money service, which enables customers to top up phone and entertainment services abroad for family and friends. With International Top-Up, users of Ooredoo Money can recharge any prepaid mobile number in over 140 countries, buy data products for any operator in 14 countries, and make digital TV subscription payments for selected countries.
 
Customers can make International Top-Ups through the Ooredoo Money app or with USSD quick codes, entering the top-up amount in local currency and confirming. The Ooredoo Money app is also available in Arabic, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Tagalog and Nepali.
 
Allowing customers to top up the balances of family members’ and friends’ accounts is a long-standing practice in prepaid plans. In this example from Ooredoo Qatar, the operator is using mobile money to expand the concept beyond the traditional parameters.
 
With the vast proliferation of mobile money systems and the growth of interoperability, it is now possible to use platforms such as Ooredoo Money to make payments to a multitude of entities all over the world. It is clever of the operator to take advantage of this capability to make it possible to enlarge the family-and-friends-top-up concept to include other operators and even other products beyond garden-variety top-ups.
 
For an MNO to give its customers the ability to pay for other operators’ services might seem a bit counterintuitive, at least compared to the idea of topping up other accounts within the operator’s ecosystem, but in today’s ultra-connected world, other operators are really part of any operator’s ecosystem. By encouraging top-ups to the accounts of other operators, Oordeoo is in fact insuring that its own subscribers will continue to have solvent and vigorous communication partners among family and friends, and by keeping lines of communication active, this offer will likely ensure that Oordeoo subscribers continue to spend money—and, it is hoped, more money—on their own bills with Ooredoo.
 
Adding more sophisticated, value-added products to the menu of options for purchasing for others (albeit not in nearly as broad a swath of markets as the basic top-ups) makes sense, since more and more users are sharing data-intensive features with each other while using their devices. Streaming entertainment products are an example, and another is mobile gaming, in which there is a social aspect to a data-consuming activity that requires communication between users to work. While we are not sure if this is one of the products Ooredoo’s International Top-Up is including, it would be a good idea under this concept. 


Tarifica is the global leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing. Covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe, Tarifica’s databases of mobile and fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance. 

To learn more about Tarifica, please visit www.tarifica.com 

Ooredoo Qatar Demonstrates Khalifa Stadium Network

Ooredoo Qatar stated that at the final match of the Emir Cup football tournament on 19 May, it demonstrated its new mobile network at Khalifa Stadium to 45,000 spectators. The 4G/LTE advanced centralized RAN mobile technologies that were used in this match are up to 40 percent faster than the best current technologies, according to the operator. They are the basis of the technologies to be deployed by every arena during the FIFA World Cup 2022, which will be held in Qatar.

The specialized narrow-beam antennae delivered a higher capacity, enabling fans to stay connected and share their experiences. Ooredoo is actively working on its Smart Stadium offering, which controls security, connectivity, identity management, and access control, enabling teams to manage large-scale events with enhanced predictive models, business intelligence and live monitoring. With smart devices, spectators can order food for delivery, check the length of toilet queues at half-time breaks, access in-stadium broadcasts, and watch replays of game action.

We like not only the idea of a Smart Stadium system but also the fact that a mobile operator is creating and offering it. Sporting events are massive opportunities for revenue generation, given the large crowd sizes and the demand for data as fans share their experiences with friends directly and via social media. The sheer density of data demand within a limited space makes a sports stadium not only very attractive to an operator, but also very much in need of having a special, purpose-built connectivity solution.

For Ooredoo rather than a non-MNO technology developer to create such a solution is a good move and should be an inspiration to other operators. This way, not only does the operator stand to take a far higher proportion of data-traffic revenue than it would if users were on various networks, but the actual data volume will be higher due to more efficient network use. Of course, there also is the presumably sizable revenue to be earned from selling the Smart Stadium technology itself to venues.

Finally, we like this offering because it is so well-tailored to the particular needs of a sports stadium, including security, access control, and features that enhance customers’ experience in relevant ways while they are attending the game.  

Tarifica is the global leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing. Covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe, Tarifica’s databases of mobile and fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance. To learn more about Tarifica, please visit www.tarifica.com