At its press conference in Barcelona, Nokia announced its mobile financial services pilot in India.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, Nokia announced its Nokia Money initiative that allows payments to be made using a mobile phone, and will be first piloted in India.

Between the 15-16 February 2010, at ONCE, the home of the Spanish National Organization for the Blind and a short walk from the Mobile World Congress venue, Nokia held its conference and shared its aims for the future.

The commercial pilot of Nokia Money has been established in a partnership with YES BANK in Pune, one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. The service, called Mobile Money Services by YES BANK, brings financial services to the consumers’ mobile devices.

Teppo Paavola, VP and General Manager of Mobile Financial Services at Nokia, said: “The Nokia Money initiative based on Obopay’s platform is initially targeted at growth markets and designed to work in partnership with multiple network operators and banks, involving distributors and merchants in a dynamic open ecosystem to seamlessly provide the new services. YES BANK is our first partner in India to bring this service to market.”

In the initial phase consumers will be able to transfer money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number; pay utility bills; as well as recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up). In the future, users will also be able to pay merchants for goods and services.

The service is particularly viable for regions where not everyone has a bank account – in fact millions don’t, and in Africa for example, it is thought that only one in five people have a ´live´ bank account.

At the same time, Africa has been one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world for the past two to three years – and subscribers could reach an estimated 512 million by 2012, so it is clear to see that this technology has a market.

However, a number of African operators are already offering money transfer services – such as Zain’s Zap, Safaricom’s Mpesa and MTN’s mobile money – so Nokia isn’t so ground-breaking after all.

Kenya in particular is moving forward rapidly in the mobile technology stakes. The Kenyan government received the GSMA government leadership award for progressive mobile broadband strategy as a result of its actions in cutting tax on mobile phones and information communication technology (ICT) equipment, and promoting the early roll-out of mobile broadband.

It also demonstrated its commitment to modernising the telecoms sector when it facilitated the installation of two fibre optic cables, TEAMs and Seacom, which is helping to deliver a new era of broadband capacity for Kenya and the East African region.

We want to know what you think of this initiative, and whether you already use something similar or if you think it would be useful to you?  Would you like to be able to use a service like this to pay for your ICM examinations or membership fee?

To watch a video about the Nokia Money pilot in India, click here.