Mobile company launches credit purchase at ANZ Royal ATMs

SMART Mobile announced Monday that its customers can now buy credit at ANZ Royal Bank machines in a sign of further integration between Cambodia’s banking and telecoms sectors.

The phone provider is allowing users to top up at ANZ Royal’s ATMs in Phnom Penh, a press release stated. The service is also provided by market leader Mobitel, a spokeswoman said.

“This is part of our strategy to offer to our subscribers multiple ways of recharging their accounts,” stated Smart Mobile CEO Thomas Hundt, in an email Monday.

The move is the latest within the Kingdom’s highly competitive telecoms sector to team up with the banks to offer increasingly diverse services and reach new customers. Smart Mobile, together with Hello and Mfone, already work with ANZ subsidiary Wing Cambodia to provide mobile banking – a service that enables people to transfer money via text message.

Mobitel, owned by the Royal Group, is in the process of launching its own mobile-banking initiative called VLOAD, under development with Refresh Mobile.

According to Hundt, cooperating with the banking sector can offer mobile customers more convenient ways to interact with the firm.

“Cambodia’s banking sector is developing fast. More and more people have bank accounts and make their transactions through banks,” he wrote.

The company is developing further links with the banking sector, after offering a similar service with ACLEDA bank since September 2009.

“We are already in progress of implementing the scheme with more banks. Contracts with two more banks have concluded already and under implementation, and we are looking beyond that for more banks to work with,” Hundt wrote.

ANZ Royal Bank also praised the agreement reached with Smart Mobile.

“We are proud to provide our customers with another convenient service, helping to bring more international banking standards to Cambodia,” ANZ Royal Bank CEO Stephen Higgins stated in the press release.

Smart Mobile customers can top up at ATMs in Tuol Kok, the riverside area, Olympic Stadium, Pet Loksang, Phsar Doem Thkov, Stung Meanchey, Toeuk Thla, Chaom Chao, Takhmao and Chbar Ampov.