SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 12 (SeeNews) – Hungarian mobile payment solutions provider Cellum Group plans to enter Albania early next year after announcing it is set to launch a smartphone application on the Bulgarian market in November, a member of the Cellum Bulgaria board said.
The next two markets that the company is eyeing in Southeast Europe are Macedonia and Serbia, Klara Dobrev told SeeNews at a media event in Sofia held on Thursday to announce the upcoming commercial launch of the CellumPay mobile payment service.
“We would like to make the launch in Albania from January 1. I hope we’ll have the biggest Albanian mobile operators on board and we will start there with one acquiring bank.”
Dobrev said Cellum tries to choose countries where it can find the best people for business. “Because business is always about technology and the right people. And we are very happy that, here in Bulgaria as well as in Albania, we have found very good partners to get things off the ground quite quickly.”
Cellum Bulgaria was established in 2011 as a joint venture between the Hungarian group and the local Corporate Commercial Bank.
The capital needs for launching operations in Albania will not be that big because the technology itself is already in place and Cellum would only need funds for sales operations, the official said, adding that the Hungarian group would be a majority shareholder in the Albanian unit.
Dobrev explained the rationale behind Cellum’s move into the Bulgarian market with the fact that it is very similar with Hungary in terms of size and consumer behaviour.
“In every country, it is important to focus on the needs of the people. One of the reasons why you need local partners is to identify the needs of local consumers. For example, one of the big problems for consumers in Albania is the payment of utility bills. Another focus area in Albania is person-to-person money transfers due to the country’s large expatriate community abroad.”
The Bulgarian unit’s CellumPay application, set to launch in the second half of November, would allow smartphone users to pay utility bills, top up their prepaid cellphone cards and shop from everywhere anytime.
Users have to download the versions of the application for Android, iPhone or Windows phones and then register their debit or credit card to activate the service. They can then either go to the respective website or, by scanning a QR code, make purchases on the go.