Maxis and Transfer To™ team up to offer ‘i-Share’ festive rewards for airtime transfers to Indonesia and the Philippines

Kuala Lumpur, 1 December 2008 - Maxis Communications Berhad ("Maxis"), Malaysia’s leading mobile telecommunications operator, and Transfer To™, a leading global airtime provider, have teamed up to launch two promotions to reward Maxis and Hotlink i-Share customers during the Aidil Adha (Hari Raya Qurban) festive holiday from 1 to 15 December 2008, and during Christmas week from 15 to 30 December 2008. Hotlink i-Share is a first-in-Malaysia service by Maxis that was launched in April this year and enables its prepaid subscribers to share airtime credit with their friends and family to several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines through an easy-to-use “shared top-up” application developed jointly with Transfer To™.

To celebrate Aidil Adha, which falls on 8 December this year, all new Hotlink i-Share customers will be rewarded with an additional 10,000 Indonesian Rupiah top-up sent directly to the first person they reloaded back in Indonesia. An equivalent promotion will be available during the Christmas period for all i-Share top-ups sent to the Philippines.

After their collaboration to launch Hotlink i-Share to Indonesia and the Philippines, Maxis continues to work with Transfer ToTM in offering value to overseas foreign workers in Malaysia. Maxis also offers Hotlink i-Share to Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Through the Hotlink i-Share service, Maxis is able to address the needs of two million Indonesians[1] and 650,000 Filipinos[2] living and working in Malaysia. These migrant communities, who are mainly prepaid users[3], traditionally transfer part of their earnings every month directly to the household head in their home country. However, they have no appropriate solution for sending smaller amounts to the rest of their family on special occasions. The Hotlink i-Share service comes as the perfect solution for giving out prepaid credit as a gift for birthdays, festivals, religious celebrations and other occasions.

“Hotlink i-Share is so simple to use that Maxis postpaid and prepaid customers need just follow a few steps to send airtime credit to their relatives. They can choose their top-up amount from a wide range of denominations depending on their home country: from 10,000 to 50,000 Rupiah (US$1 to US$5.25) and 30 to 300 in Pesos (US$0.60 to US$6.40). Transactions are processed in real-time through the Transfer To™ secure platform and both sender and receiver are immediately notified by SMS,” explained Claire Featherstone, Maxis’ Head of Mobile Commerce.

"Seeing that our previous promotion for the month of Ramadan received a very good response from our Indonesian prepaid customers, we are confident the Hotlink i-Share Aidil Adha promotion will be a success,” Featherstone added. "As our partnership with Transfer ToTM gives us access to the main mobile operators in Indonesia and the Philippines, we are looking forward to extending this promotion during other festive events, such as Christmas week.”

“A global network is required to aggregate the mobile operators’ airtime all around the world. As a trusted third party provider, Transfer ToTM interconnects operators from developed and emerging countries with a mutually profitable business model,” said Eric Barbier, Managing Director of Transfer ToTM. “By joining this growing network, Maxis benefits from our global exposure, and is now able to extend i-Share service and promotion to other migrant communities in Malaysia.”

Hotlink i-Share is an extension of other Maxis mobile commerce initiatives in the M-money suite of services, including mobile remittance.

[1] Jakarta Post, January 2008 - http://old.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20080111.K04
[2] Nam Summit 2003 - http://www.ops.gov.ph/namsummit2003/backgrounder.htm#FILIPINO
[3] Merrill Lynch study – December 2007 – 97.5% prepaid subscribers in Indonesia and 97.7% in the Philippines for the 3rd quarter of 2007