Expatriates from India, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka living, working, or visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can send airtime to add additional credit to prepaid phones of their relatives in these respective markets, a step to keep these communities well connected with their loved ones and making their life easier.
Thanks to a newly launched partnership between STC, Saudi Arabia's national telecommunications provider and TransferTo, the global mobile airtime transfers company, STC will provide for the first time in The Gulf the international balance transfer services.
Following the announcement, Eric Barbier, CEO of TransferTo expressed his delight on this new partnership, "We are very excited to have STC as our first client in the Middle East. STC is the region's leading telecommunications provider and the largest in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
TransferTo operates a global airtime remittance network interconnecting the mobile operators' prepaid users. Simply by SMS, foreign workers can recharge the prepaid mobile phone of their relatives back home. Airtime remittance enables migrants to send small value amounts: 200 million migrants remit $300 billion every year.
Commenting on the deal, Mr. Jameel Al Molhem, Vice president of Personal Services Unit at STC, added "Expatriates and visitors now have an innovative mobile service to stay in touch with their families and support them from Saudi Arabia. The cross border transfer is immediate and simply triggered by SMS."
"The STC International Credit Transfer service enables the strong expatriates' communities in the Kingdom to send airtime to top up the prepaid phones of their relatives in India, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Recently STC has extended its airtime transfer offer to Egypt, enabling Egyptians residing in or visiting Saudi Arabia to recharge Vodafone Egypt prepaid phones" continued Eric Barbier.
Through its partnership with TransferTo, STC now has an ideal solution to complement its expatriates subscribers' regular money transfers, by enabling easy, real time and secure sending of small value amounts to friends and family members back home.
Thanks to TransferTo, mobile operators, retailers, banks and money transfer companies can offer an innovative and differentiating mobile value added service to their ethnic segment -- an underserved market with a high telecom spending usage.
With more than 100 migration corridors fully covered over 5 continents, TransferTo is the leading global player in the international airtime remittance space.
About STC
STC is the leading national telecommunications services provider in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. STC provides four key services: Home services which include PSTN, broadband DSL, Personal services which include mobile telephone services and value added services, Enterprise services which provide advanced business data solutions to enterprises and Wholesale services that provide network services to other local operators. In the recent years STC grew beyond its local borders and went global forming a network of business and investments in various Gulf countries, Asia, and Africa. The company is present in Kuwait, Bahrain, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and South Africa enabling it to provide services to a bigger customer base and increasing its total number of customers externally by studying and evaluating investment opportunities. For more information, visit STC on the Internet: http://www.stc.com.sa/
