Celtel Sells Mobile Payments Subsidiary

Celtel, a pan-African mobile communications group with over five million managed customers in 13 countries, has agreed to sell its wholly-owned subsidiary Celpay to FirstRand Bank in South Africa for an undisclosed sum. Celpay is a mobile payment processing company with activities in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The sale of Celpay is part of Celtel's strategy to divest non core businesses and focus on its mobile telephony business in the sub-Saharan markets in Africa.

FirstRand is an integrated financial services group headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. The sale is subject to approval by the South African Reserve Bank.

Marten Pieters, Celtel International's Chief Executive Officer commented "As a leading operator in sub Sahara Africa our strategy is to focus on our core business of providing mobile telecommunications services to a rich potential of customers in the 13 countries where we are licensed. These countries have a combined population of more than 240 million people and telephone penetration is still below 5% in most of these countries."

EB Nieuwoudt, CEO FirstRand Africa & Emerging Markets said "By investing in Celpay, FirstRand is supporting the emergence of the next generation of payment solutions which will be critical to the eventual introduction of other banking products."

Posted to the site on 28th March 2005