Bahrain-based Arab Financial Services (AFS) has signed a strategic partnership agreements with Bharti Telesoft and Riyada Consulting.

The agreements aim at jointly marketing their offerings in the mCommerce field, the company said in a statement.

AFS is a leading provider of electronic payments and consumer finance outsourcing services across the Middle East.

'We are excited about this strategic partnership under which we will be integrating the mobile platform focusing a mobile payment with our in-house card issuing platforms and offering mCommerce as a new value-added service,' said AFS chief executive officer Shankar Sharma.

'Working closely with Bharti Telesoft and complemented by Riyada Consulting knowledge and expertise in the domains of telecom and finance, we believe that many of our existing customers will take up the service.

'In addition, we will be jointly offering mobiquity as a hosted stand alone service to institutions across the region.'

'We believe that this partnership would present the region's financial and non-financial institutions with a reliable, pioneering technology, which offers a competitive advantage by helping the institutions grow their business in a cost-efficient manner,' said Riyada Consulting president Shaikha Dheya Al Khalifa.

'As a product mobiquity has tasted success with operators and banks in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and many countries of Africa,' said Bharti Telesoft chief executive officer Manoranjan Mohapatra.

'The solution is to help its customers to use their mobile phones as means of payments and inquiry for the payment cards serviced by AFS platform. Using a mobile phone number, which has been pre-registered with the bank, a customer can pay out credit card bills from their bank accounts, submit requests and make inquiries,' he said. – TradeArabia News Service