Monet receives funding by Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation for its Universal Payment Gateway in Pakistan

Monet (Private) Limited announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company is actively pursuing an innovative global financial and development research project to enable universal acceptance of mobile money payments.

Monet is a Cards and Payment services provider in Mobile, Branchless and Alternate Banking domain, working with a vision to digitize payments in the cash-based economies. Whereas, Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 1100 projects in more than 60 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization.

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how the world solves persistent global health and development challenges. Monet’s project is one of more than 50 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 14 grants announced earlier this summer by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To receive funding, Monet and other Grand Challenges Explorations winners demonstrated a bold idea for digital financial inclusion that will enable universal acceptance of mobile money payments to create an economic ecosystem that will help lift the poorest out of poverty.

Monet is in the process of developing a Universal Payment Gateway Model in Pakistan that provides more payment options offered around consumer mobile wallets through associated transactional channels by creating an interoperable eco-system amongst Banks, Telcos and Merchants. Side by side, Monet is strongly contributing towards increasing the acceptance of card-based transactions through its mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solution and merchant aggregation model, the first of its kind in Pakistan. This way Monet is bringing those small scale merchants/retailers on board which do not fall in the normal Merchant acquisition criteria set by Acquiring Banks. Monet’s model enables small and medium size shops & entrepreneurs to register and start accepting payments through Cards & Mobile wallets.