The solution was commercially launched by Zain under the name Zap to East Africa. The service is immediately available to Zain customers in Kenya and Tanzania. Zap will be rolled across Africa and the Middle East throughout 2009 including Zambia and Ghana.

The Zain- Oberthur Technologies is partnering with leading international and regional banks to launch Zap, which will allow Zain customers to use their mobile phone to pay bills and pay for goods and services.

This will also allow customers to receive money and send money to friends and family, send and receive money to the bank accounts, withdraw cash, top up their own airtime account or top up someone else's, send airtime to Zain customers in East Africa and manage their bank accounts.

The Zap service will also be included as part of Zain's pioneering One Network service which allows travelling customers to move across geographic borders without roaming surcharges, recharge their mobile phones with locally purchased top up cards and receive calls for free.

The user interface is easy to use and has been customized for each Zain operator across the continent. Oberthur Technologies' expertise both in mobile and in the banking environment combined with the capability to support Zain Group at both local and global level were key to succeeding in the implementation of this major secure solutions project.

"Zain is demonstrating its ambitious strategy to become one of the top ten leading telecom companies in the world. It was key for us to reward a long term partnership, involving Oberthur Technologies in this prestigious project. By enabling people to use their mobile phones as mobile wallets, we hope to deliver lasting benefits not just for our customers, but also for the economies of Africa." said Chris Gabriel, CEO Zain Africa.

"We are proud to participate in the deployment of such a new advanced secure technology in Africa and the Middle East."

" The Mobile Commercial Security solution introduced in the market by the Zain Group offers a new level of payment and banking services to customers, and we are very pleased to continue investment in new solutions which benefit the daily life of people in developing markets." said Thierry Siminger, Russia, Middle-East and Africa Managing Director at the Card Systems Division of Oberthur Technologies.