BBM Money Enters Android and iOS, BlackBerry: We’re still Optimist

After giving series of signs, BlackBerry finally announced that BBM Money is going to be available for Android by the end of this year and for iOS by the beginning of 2015. (Still) being concentrated in Indonesia, the service gets backed up by Monitise and PermataBank. At the same moment, BlackBerry also announced its partnership with TransferTo, which would enable users to send cellphone credit to as well as receive it from their fellow BBM contacts.

Even though last year’s trial of BBM Money resulted on disappointment, BlackBerry keeps positive about the service. In fact, the company has spent even much more money to develop the service. Actually, considering the fact that in Indonesia, the number of cellphone users exceeds the number of banking customers, this BlackBerry’s optimism does make sense. Further, in regard to their previous failure during the trial period, BlackBerry argued that its service’s exclusivity served as a stumbling block.

“By combining BlackBerry’s security DNA and BBM’s privacy attribute, we are uniquely positioning ourselves in a growing mobile payment environment. This newly established mobile payment collaboration has marked our attempts to effectively turn BBM from merely a real-time chat server to social media and e-commerce provider. We aim to enrich the functions of BBM, ranging from photo and document sharing to location and money (credit) sharing,” John Sims, BlackBerry's President Global Enterprise Services, stated.

Such optimism is also held by Bianto Surodjo, the Retail Banking Director of PermataBank, which is one of BlackBerry’s organizing partners. “PermataBank takes a fundamental role in bringing BBM Money to Indonesia. Besides being the one who publish the service, administer its licenses, and make sure the service doesn't violate any regulations given by Bank Indonesia, PermataBank would also make use of its experience of having enterprise transactions and partnering with retailers in order to endorse the using of BBM Money,” he stated.

While there is no fixed target for the implementation of this new model of BBM Money, Monitise’s EVP for Asia Pacific Darren Sugden suggested that they aim to put Indonesia at the very front line of mobile payment and commerce innovations. Monitise itself completely took over BBM Money’s development by acquiring the shares of Astra Graphia Information Technology in AGIT Monitise Indonesia joint venture last June.

The event of the announcement was also used by BlackBerry to introduce its solution of sending cellphone credit to BBM contacts. The solution is expected to enrich users’ experience of using the messaging platform.

“The integration of TransferTo’s global scale credit transactions and BBM eases users to send small amount of credit to their fellow BBM contacts. Since almost 80 percent of mobile users are the customers of pre-paid operator services, this new feature will enable them to always get connected to their relatives abroad. The feature would also help cellular operators to make use of the BBM users’ high level of interaction,” Eric Barbier, TransferTo’s CEO, explained.