Leading international money transfer service provider, Western Union today announced the launch of its Digital Vendor Program with an aim to extend the reach of its Money Transfer services in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

“Establishing a strong mobile vendor program is a critical step in the delivery of our ‘Western Union Anywhere’ service proposition,” said Matt Dill, SVP and Head of Western Union Digital Ventures. “By collaborating on a global level with proven mobile platform providers, we believe we can simplify deployments for our mobile partners and introduce a more consistent Western Union experience for consumers.”

For its Mobile Money transfer initiative, Western union has roped in four mobile finance platform providers, South Africa-based Fundamo, India-based mChek, U.S.-based Sybase 365 and Singapore-based Utiba Pte.

Western Union brings together service providers, consumer brands, mobile operators, financial institutions and mobile platform providers through its eco-system.

“There are a lot of pieces that have to fall into place to deliver on the promise of mobile financial services,” said Red Gillen, Senior Analyst Alternative Payments for Celent. “Western Union is taking steps to remove technology barriers and make it easier for its partners to launch a global money transfer service, and that can only be a net positive.”

Upon certification from Western Union, banks or mobile operators can enable its users to send or receive money through Western union’s money Transfer service connected to 334,000 Agent locations in 200 countries and territories.

 “The mChek-Western Union integration will provide a pre-integrated, turnkey solution for Mobile Money Transfer,” said Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek. “Mobile network operators around the world can rapidly realize the benefits of customer loyalty and a new revenue stream without major CAPEX or systems integrations expenses.”

mChek is available to subscribers of Bharti Airtel and Tata Indicom in India while in Sri Lanka it available through Dialog Telekom. The company says that it is conducting pilot projects in five other countries.