América Móvil SAB is teaming up with Citigroup Inc.’s Banamex and the financial services Grupo Financiero Inbursa SAB in a $50 million mobile banking joint venture. Called Transfer, the joint venture will store and manage bank accounts associated with a cell number across the Latin American region. The project will start operations in Mexico by the first quarter of 2012. Banamex is the second largest bank in Mexico.
América Móvil, owned by Carlos Slim, says that only a third of its 65 million customers in Mexico have bank accounts. Transfer will allow users to pay at stores and transfer money to other accounts using their phones. In the initial stages, Transfer will be available to clients of Banamex, and América Móvil’s Mexican unit Telcel.
Approved
América Móvil has also announced that it has received authorization from the Mexican securities regulator Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (“CNBV”) to commence its previously announced tender offer for the shares of Teléfonos de México, S.A.B. de C.V. (“Telmex”), that it does not already own directly or indirectly.
AMX expects to file definitive offer documentation with the CNBV later today and to file a Schedule TO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, October 11, 2011.
The tender offer is expected to commence on October 11, 2011 and to expire on November 11, 2011, unless extended.
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