Orange Poland teams with mBank to create Orange Finance

Orange Poland has launched a new mobile banking service called Orange Finance as a joint venture with local bank mBank, in an effort to provide new services that engage and retain subscribers in the highly competitive Polish market.

The service will allow Orange and mBank customers to carry out banking services on their mobile phones, and will also provide some additional benefits such as access to cheaper credit.

mBank president Cezary Stypułkowski said the two groups expect to gain around a million clients in three years. Orange Poland currently has around 15 million mobile users, while mBank has a customer base of 8 million.

"In just six months we have created a simple and distinctive mobile and online banking service for customers using Orange innovation," said Stypułkowski, in a statement translated via Google Translate.

According to Reuters, Stypułkowski also said that if revenue is comparable to current levels, "we're talking a few hundred million zlotys of additional income in the third year."

Bruno Duthoit, CEO of Orange Poland, added: "We expect that after three years this offer will contribute the equivalent of several per cent of our current total revenue," Reuters reported.

The move means that Orange Poland has become the latest mobile operator in the country to join forces with a bank: Polkomtel--which sells its mobile services under the Plus brand--provides a service together with Plus Bank, which shares the same controlling shareholder. T-Mobile Poland provides a banking service together with Alior Bank. The fourth mobile network operator in Poland is Play, which is owned by P4.

In July, Juniper Research said at least 1.75 billion mobile phone users will have used their devices for banking purposes by the end of 2019, compared to 800 million this year.

For more:
- see this statement from Orange Poland (in Polish)
- see this Reuters article

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