Singtel has announced a new strategic partnership with bike sharing company Mobike covering mobile payments, IoT connectivity, data analytics and marketing across Asia.
Under the alliance, Singtel, Optus and regional mobile associates Bharti Airtel (India), AIS (Thailand), Globe (Philippines) and Telkomsel (Indonesia) will work together to explore mobile payments for bike rides.
Using the group-wide Singtel Open Platform payment gateway, mobile customers across Asia will be able to pay for trips using direct carrier billing or via the Singtel Group's various mobile wallets.
Singtel and Mobike likewise plan to explore new IoT technology including enhanced machine-type communication (eMTC) and narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) to better locate bikes even in areas with poor mobile signal coverage, and to help reduce power consumption and extend the battery life of Mobike's IoT smart locks.
In addition, Singtel and Mobike plan to explore the use of data analytics based on the more than 30TB of daily data generated by Mobike's AI platform, as well as exploring strategic marketing initiatives to promote each other's services.
Mobike first launched in China and has since March launched in Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and Australia.