MTN, Vodafone and Safaricom are also providing mobile-commerce services in the region in order to compete with traditional money transfer services.

However, Zain's launch of mobile payment services in Malawi, Sierra Leone and Nigeria follow the successful rollout of services in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in February last year, in which more than 10 million people became subscribers.

Juniper Research has forecast that service provider revenue derived from mobile money transfer and remittances will exceed US$5 billion globally by 2013.

Zain's service, dubbed Zap, is designed to allow people to have access to financial transaction via mobile phones anytime and anywhere. The mobile commerce service was introduced to allow Zain customers to use their phones to withdraw money from banks, pay utility bills, receive or send money to their bank accounts and buy airtime for their mobile phones.

Zap is part of Zain's One Network platform, which allows customers to call countries where the service is available without paying roaming charges. The platform also allows travelling customers to make calls and SMS messages at local rates as well as recharge their mobile phones with locally purchased top-up cards. Travelling customers are also able to send money back to their families and business from those countries where the Zap service is enabled.