HAMIL­TON, Bermu­da-Al­ready the fastest grow­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ma­jor in the Caribbean, Dig­i­cel has re­cent­ly en­tered in­to a fi­nanc­ing deal that could see it well po­si­tioned to ex­pand mo­bile bank­ing tech­nol­o­gy across this re­gion. In an an­nounce­ment re­leased by the Sil­i­con Val­ley based M-Via, a mo­bile bank­ing firm which touts it­self as the com­pa­ny that rev­o­lu­tionised how im­mi­grant and un­banked fam­i­lies save and share their wealth, the Dig­i­cel Group was iden­ti­fied as the leader of a US$17 mil­lion fi­nanc­ing round ini­ti­at­ed by M-Via.

Fol­low­ing this suc­cess­ful fund rais­ing, m-Via changed its name to Boom Fi­nan­cial and stat­ed this fi­nanc­ing round now took its tak­ings to more than US$30 mil­lion to-date, which would be used to ex­pand its prod­uct team in the Unit­ed States, as well as to in­crease sales chan­nels and dis­tri­b­u­tion in the US, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the Caribbean.

In com­ment­ing on the lat­est in­vest­ment by the Bermu­da-based telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant, Colm Delves, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Dig­i­cel Group said: "Dig­i­cel be­lieves in pro­vid­ing the best val­ue to our cus­tomers. Our in­vest­ment in Boom Fi­nan­cial is a re­flec­tion of the strong val­ue of the Boom ser­vice and the high-qual­i­ty com­pa­ny that the team has built.

"Dig­i­cel's cus­tomers in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca re­ceive more than US$5 bil­lion a year in cash re­mit­tances from the US. Work­ing with the Boom Fi­nan­cial team, we will seed a mo­bile bank­ing ecosys­tem in these mar­kets that elim­i­nates the high fees and safe­ty is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with cash re­mit­tances." The Dig­i­cel Group op­er­ates across 31 mar­kets, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the South Pa­cif­ic.

The Boom mo­bile mon­ey ser­vice is the first to com­plete­ly elim­i­nate the need for tra­di­tion­al cash wire-trans­fer ser­vices, pro­vid­ing a safe, eco­nom­i­cal and easy way to send mon­ey. Boom mem­bers can use their mo­bile phones to make low-cost, bank-grade do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al mon­ey trans­fers and pay­ments via a sim­ple text mes­sage.

Mem­bers can al­so make pur­chas­es and with­drawals at thou­sands of par­tic­i­pat­ing Boom mer­chants and at more than 100,000 Boom au­to­mat­ic telling ma­chines in more than 150 coun­tries. "Our part­ner­ship with Dig­i­cel fur­ther val­i­dates Boom as the pre­mier US brand for mo­bile fi­nan­cial ser­vices for im­mi­grants and their ex­tend­ed fam­i­lies across the Amer­i­c­as," said Bill Barhy­dt, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Boom Fi­nan­cial. "Dig­i­cel's ex­ten­sive cov­er­age in key Boom mar­kets such as Haiti and Ja­maica will ac­cel­er­ate our reach in­to these mar­kets."

Caribbean 360