This week, Finland based mobile technology manufacturer Nokia introduced a new mobile payment service called Nokia Money. The new service allows financial management and payments from a mobile phone.

“In many countries, mobile phone ownership significantly exceeds bank account usage,” explains Mary McDowell, EVP and Chief Development Officer at Nokia. “With more than 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, global demand for access to financial services presents a strong opportunity to combine mobile devices with simple but powerful financial services.”

Emerging economies
Initially, Nokia Money seems primarily targeted at third world countries and emerging economies, much like M-Pesa, where few people have access to reliable financial services. Nokia is building a network of money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts. “Rural consumers will particularly benefit from money transfers and, for urban consumers used to online services, we are enabling services such as payment of utility bills, purchase of train and movie tickets, [SIM credit] top-ups, all through their mobile phones.”

Bundling functionalities
Other than that the service will be as convenient and simple as “making a voice call or sending an SMS”, not much information is revealed about the interface or the functionality offered. Will we be able to keep track of our monthly expenses using our cellphone? Maybe get a mortgage quote or gain some insight in our credit status? Or will we still need to register at services like Mint and Wesabe for that? Bundle all these functionalities in one seamless mobile app and Nokia will truly have a revolutionary service. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Nokia World event in Stuttgart for more details to be revealed.

The Nokia Money service will be operated in cooperation with Obopay, a US based company that specializes in mobile payments. The service will be rolled out to selected markets beginning early 2010 but will ultimately be available across different operator networks and on virtually any mobile phone.