Trumpet Mobile Goes Nationwide With RadioShack
Tim McElligott 04/02/2008
Trumpet Mobile announced a national distribution agreement with RadioShack this week in which the MVNO 's prepaid wireless services will be available at more than 4,300 RadioShack locations.
Trumpet Mobile’s go-to-market strategy includes is an international remittance feature that through a partnership with Western Union allows subscribers transfer money from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean from their mobile phones.
Trumpet Mobile [http://www.trumpetmobile.com] also offers the industry’s first prepaid family plan, a competitive low prepaid domestic rate plan of 10 cents per minute, international long distance rates as low as three cents per minute, messaging for as low as five cents per message, and a loyalty reward program that gives mobile subscribers bonus minutes for airtime usage.
The company is targeting the unbanked and under-banked population in the United States, which numbers as much as 40 million. Eighty percent of these are users of mobile phones and currently conduct more than $13 billion annually in alternative financial services transactions.
“There are a lot of MVNOs out there, but only Trumpet is focusing on this growing under-banked and credit-challenged demographic,” said Craig McNeil, chief technology officer at Affinity Mobile.
RadioShack [http://www.radioshack.com] will be selling phones for as little as $19.99. The remittance functionality is not in the phones, but is built into the mobile application delivery environment (MADE) platform which is owned and operated by Trumpet’s parent company, Affinity Mobile, and interfaces with the Western Union [http://www.westernunion.com] backbone through the use of a debit card called the Trumpet CashCard..
“Loading money onto the card and making mobile money transfers with your Trumpet Mobile phone is safer than carrying cash in your back pocket," said John Carney, chief executive officer of Affinity Mobile.
The company also formed an alliance with mFoundry, a mobile financial platform provider, to leverage its Spotlight Financial Platform in order to enable full mobile banking, payments, coupons, loyalty, contactless services and other transaction types.
With this alliance, Affinity Mobile will be the provider for international money transfers, airtime top-ups, instant access prepaid debit accounts, bill pay and other services.
Affinity Mobile also said this week it has appointed Todd Achilles as its managing director. Achilles will lead the development and deployment of the company’s MADE solution. MADE provides mobile wallet, mobile payment and mobile transfer services to network operators, financial institutions and retail merchants. It is the enabling platform for Trumpet Mobile.
Prior to Affinity Mobile, Achilles served as the general manager for HTC Corporation, a leader in smartphones. There, he led HTC’s business in North and Latin America. Like CEO Carney, Achilles also worked at T-Mobile USA. He was in sales, engineering, product development and marketing.
Tim McElligott 04/02/2008
Trumpet Mobile announced a national distribution agreement with RadioShack this week in which the MVNO 's prepaid wireless services will be available at more than 4,300 RadioShack locations.
Trumpet Mobile’s go-to-market strategy includes is an international remittance feature that through a partnership with Western Union allows subscribers transfer money from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean from their mobile phones.
Trumpet Mobile [http://www.trumpetmobile.com] also offers the industry’s first prepaid family plan, a competitive low prepaid domestic rate plan of 10 cents per minute, international long distance rates as low as three cents per minute, messaging for as low as five cents per message, and a loyalty reward program that gives mobile subscribers bonus minutes for airtime usage.
The company is targeting the unbanked and under-banked population in the United States, which numbers as much as 40 million. Eighty percent of these are users of mobile phones and currently conduct more than $13 billion annually in alternative financial services transactions.
“There are a lot of MVNOs out there, but only Trumpet is focusing on this growing under-banked and credit-challenged demographic,” said Craig McNeil, chief technology officer at Affinity Mobile.
RadioShack [http://www.radioshack.com] will be selling phones for as little as $19.99. The remittance functionality is not in the phones, but is built into the mobile application delivery environment (MADE) platform which is owned and operated by Trumpet’s parent company, Affinity Mobile, and interfaces with the Western Union [http://www.westernunion.com] backbone through the use of a debit card called the Trumpet CashCard..
“Loading money onto the card and making mobile money transfers with your Trumpet Mobile phone is safer than carrying cash in your back pocket," said John Carney, chief executive officer of Affinity Mobile.
The company also formed an alliance with mFoundry, a mobile financial platform provider, to leverage its Spotlight Financial Platform in order to enable full mobile banking, payments, coupons, loyalty, contactless services and other transaction types.
With this alliance, Affinity Mobile will be the provider for international money transfers, airtime top-ups, instant access prepaid debit accounts, bill pay and other services.
Affinity Mobile also said this week it has appointed Todd Achilles as its managing director. Achilles will lead the development and deployment of the company’s MADE solution. MADE provides mobile wallet, mobile payment and mobile transfer services to network operators, financial institutions and retail merchants. It is the enabling platform for Trumpet Mobile.
Prior to Affinity Mobile, Achilles served as the general manager for HTC Corporation, a leader in smartphones. There, he led HTC’s business in North and Latin America. Like CEO Carney, Achilles also worked at T-Mobile USA. He was in sales, engineering, product development and marketing.
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