The company believes that - by providing access to pre-pay airtime for family and friends abroad - banks, financial institutions; money bureaux and foreign exchange companies can unlock new revenue streams; boost customer loyalty and create new services to attract multi-cultural audiences.

Mi-Pay's International Airtime Top-up is a white labelled and highly "sticky" service that will appeal to financial institutions seeking a quick-to-market, risk-free way to access to the rapidly growing and profitable airtime transfer market that exists within the world's key remittance corridors.

Enabling consumers to top-up their own phones internationally; or those of family and friends overseas, remotely, the multi-channel service can be accessed from the Web, by SMS, or via a network of point of sale terminals or kiosks within retail financial branches. Consumers can choose to either make single top-ups or create regular top-ups; to keep one or more remote handsets recharged each week, month or quarter and to pay by cash, card or bank in the sender's local currency.

With mobile operator partners already in place to support its International Airtime Top-up recipient services in Europe, Africa, India and Latin America, Mi-Pay has secured major new agreements that will potentially double its reach in a matter of months. By the end of 2010, it anticipates that its 'sending and receiving' channels will cover 65% of the global population.

Norman Frankel CEO of Mi-Pay comments, "New figures from World Bank show that, despite global recession, in 2009 the international remittance market to developing countries is set to come in at around $317 billion dollars. This reflects the huge desire for individuals to continue to aid family and friends living abroad even in the face of current financial pressures."

"Our experience working with leading international operators and finance groups has shown that International Airtime Top-up - wh-up - where users can buy mobile phone airtime for contacts living in another country - may boost remittance values to developing regions where mobile phone access is vital. By offering the ability to provide regular low value financial assistance, it creates new opportunities for those wishing to send support to their loved ones abroad; and innovative new campaign and marketing platforms for financial service companies."

Mi-Pay handles all aspects of International Airtime Top-up service design, delivery, transaction handling and process support. Its International Airtime Top-up interface can be fully client branded offering a unified 'look and feel' that integrates easily with their existing consumer facing services.

Mi-Pay is passionate about only using 'best in class' solutions and has invested in a secure, reliable and scalable open systems payments platform from S1 which will process all transactions from its International Airtime Top-up service. S1 is globally proven in over 3,000 banks and retailers in more than 50 countries, collectively processing over 10 billion transactions annually from 100,000 ATMs and 750,000 POS terminals.