It was a case of history repeating itself as Etisalat carted home the award for innovation at the just concluded Mobile World Congress, the most important annual gathering of the telecommunications industry. The company won in the “Best Near Field Communication/Mobile Money Product” category at the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards 2013 during the congress held in Barcelona, Spain, adding to three awards from the industry’s most prestigious competition last year.

“We are delighted that our focus on achieving customer satisfaction through creation of innovative products and services has once again been recognised at the most important event in the global telecoms calendar,” said Steven Evans, Chief Executive Officer at Etisalat Nigeria. “One of our core missions is to be known as a major enabler and innovator in the Nigerian Ecosystem and working with all key stakeholders to create a value proposition to meet the needs of our customers,” he added.

The winning product, Etisalat Commerce Programme – known in Nigeria as Easywallet – is the first fully secure Mobile Money SIM Application offered to customers with the easywallet application installed on their SIM cards. This unique application recently awarded the Best Mobile Money SIM Application at the Kalahari Awards in Lagos and also nominated for a prize in the “Most Innovative Mobile Application” category, supports multiple languages – English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and works across all makes and models of phones, smartphones and even tablet devices.

Commenting on the latest award, Mr. Abdulkarim Julfar, CEO at Etisalat Group, said: “This award will motivate us to keep innovating and introducing products that give entrepreneurs the tools they need to achieve their goals anywhere in the world.”

Easywallet brings together a wealth of services– for consumers and enterprises who are looking for the right mix of mobility, security, convenience and technology to manage their financial transactions. The mix of services available includes utility, merchant and salary payments, money transfers, online payments, bank transactions.

The Etisalat Commerce Programme has been commercially available across a number of Etisalat operations including Nigeria where it was launched last year as Easywallet. Easywallet was developed in partnership with First Bank, GTBank, Stanbic IBTC and Zenith Bank.

The judges’ criteria were that the product should be different from anything else available, easy to understand, reliable and consistent, and already on the market. The judges also wanted to see evidence that the product is popular with customers and conformity with industry standards.

In 2012, US$1.8 billion of financial transactions were completed through Etisalat Commerce.

“Through these awards, we are proud to shine the light on the mobile industry’s many innovators and leaders, from all corners of the world,” said John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA Ltd. “This year’s new categories reflected the industry’s reach into many new sectors and we received more than 600 high-quality entries from across the mobile ecosystem. We would like to congratulate all Global Mobile Awards winners and thank the many hundreds of companies and organisations that support these awards by entering each year,” he added.

A member of the judging panel described the product as “a stand-out entry in terms of the scale of deployment and comprehensive suite of m-commerce offerings across so many countries and different verticals,” adding: “The open-loop system also makes it future-proof.”

GSMA, an association for the world’s mobile operator community and broader industry organises the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest annual communications industry event.

•Photo: Steven Evans, CEO, Etisalat Nigeria.