Kumari Bank Limited (KBL) has bagged the prestigious mBillionth Award South Asia for its product -- Kumari Mobile Cash. Radhesh Pant, CEO of the bank, received the award under the m-Business & Commerce/Banking category during the mBillionth 2011 South Asia International Summit held in New Delhi, India on Saturday.
The mBillionth Award 2011 was held to honor innovative applications and services excellence in the field of mobile communications.
More than 200 applicants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka had participated in the summit.
Of more than 200 applicants, 21 were selected as winners in 11 core categories, with Kumari Bank, the sole winner representing Nepal, reads a press statement.
Issuing the statement, KBL has expressed happiness for winning the award.
“In a very short span of time, the product has helped us break traditional barriers in providing access to finance to the poor and solve inherently burning issues in the Nepalese banking sector,” the bank has said.
Kumari Mobile Cash is the first product that pioneered the “mobile wallet” concept in Nepal. Under this, the bank allows users to store cash balances in their mobile phones and they are then able to deposit and withdraw cash from their mobile phones. They can also use the stored cash value for various purposes such as remittance, bill payments, and airtime recharge.
With more than 70 percent of the population yet to be brought under formal banking system, the bank says it believes the promise echoed by the product, in improving access to sustainable financial resources, is real and achievable.
“The award has served as an outlet for the bank to scale even greater heights in the days to come,” the statement quoted Pant as saying.
Kumari Bank had launched the service over a year ago in partnership with Leapfrog Technology Inc - a Boston-based firm - with a development center in Nepal.
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