Beecell concludes Visa financial literacy SMS competition

This joint initiative formed an integral part of VISA's Kingdom-wide Financial Literacy initiative launched in Jordan last July. VISA launched this initiative featuring an educational cartoon series which was initially published on Friday September 28th 2007 in the Al Waseet newspaper featuring the 4 Fahman Family characters. In each cartoon strip published, the Fahman Family characters highlighted issues pertaining to sound financial management.

In an aim to add more flair to VISA's Financial Literacy initiative, Beecell used their state of the art technological knowhow to bring to all Zain subscribers an interactive SMS competition. This one-month competition launched on October 1st 2007 targeted Zain subscribers by inviting them to respond to a new question everyday about Financial Literacy via SMS on 96040. With each correct response they made, subscribers increased their chances of winning fantastic prizes including 24 cutting edge digital appliances from LG Electronics.

Commenting on this partnership Mr. Bashar Hantouli CEO of Beecell said, "We are proud to have joined forces with VISA in this interactive yet educational initiative, as it solidifies the fact that interactive campaigns are the most effective means to delivery key messages."

From his end, Zain's Senior Data Manager Ziad Masri said: "We at Zain are aware of the important role of mobile technology as a means of quick communication amidst the daily life's fast pace. We also believe that we will see more and more institutions taking advantage of SMS interactivity as this particular medium of communication has proven to be a popular and simple way to get any message across to the end user."

Mr. Tony Gougassian, Country Manager of Visa in the Levant, Qatar and Bahrain said, "We would like to thank Beecell for their support throughout this campaign in both its planning and implementation phases which has so far proven to gain positive interaction from members of the community."

It is worth mentioning that Beecell offers a number of content services to mobile users including: SMS news and alerts; MMS news and alerts with images; video downloads; ringbones, wallpapers, animations, themes, and detailed information and news over WAP. Its services are accessible via a network reaching over 21 mobile operators, and over 40 million subscribers across the region.