Dubai, United Arab Emirates.- Telecommunications companies must diversify their business models beyond phone plans, data or fixed services, otherwise they risk being left behind. Or at least that’s what the smartphone giant, Huawei, believes.
“What we want to do at Huawei is to help operators also transform the way they do things. Because if they continue only offering packages of calls and data minutes, they will go as far as they will go”, said César Funes, vice president of institutional relations for Huawei Latin America, within the framework of Unleash Digital Huawei Connect 2022.
One area of opportunity is in the growing adoption of digital wallets, which has been fueled by the pervasiveness of smartphones. Companies like Huawei, Apple, Google and Samsung have equipped their smartphones with digital wallets and the pandemic has accelerated their adoption as consumers prefer convenient contactless solutions as a “safe” alternative to cash payments, which are rapidly declining. .
Faisal Iqbal, software sales and marketing manager at Huawei Middle East United Arab Emirates, sees in this boom in the digitization of commerce and transactions a possibility for telecommunications operators to join this ecosystem of digital financial services with the creation of their own fintech .
They could offer solutions for sending and receiving money between individuals or even for sending remittances. In Mexico, for example, the flow of money sent by immigrants who live and work in other countries, mainly the United States, increased 16.5%, to 5,297 million dollars (mdd), according to figures accumulated as of July, from the Bank of Mexico (Banxico).
According to the consulting firm Statista, more than 440 fintechs have been established in Mexico, a country where banking penetration is still low, but the penetration of internet users continues to grow. Even retail companies have already diversified their operations into financial services via a fintech .
Iqbal says that implementing this type of fintech services would allow telecom operators to add more subscribers. “Today, most users are faced with a saturated offer of line, message and data services. Some even already have two telephone lines, but if a new disruptive service is added, it is likely that new consumers will arrive on their network; in addition to that would represent a new source of income for companies”.
5G opens the door for fintech companies to offer more efficient services to their customers, offering video tutorials with faster playback and even attention through holograms. Even AT&T has said the trend is for fintechs to become “high-value players” for the business world.
“Thinking about telecommunications is not just talking about data transmission, but you also have to think about what other uses can be given to them”, concluded Iqbal.
