December 16: eSewa, a digital payment service provider of Nepal, and popular messaging app, Rakuten Viber have joined hands to facilitate their customers, who can now top-up talk time and send money to contact numbers through Viber.

With this partnership, Viber users in Nepal can seamlessly link their eSewa account to top up talk time as well as send money to other users from within the Viber App.

According to eSwea, this partnership is the first of its kind in the Asia Pacific Region. eSewa claimed that it has become only the third company to partner with Viber for payment services after Apple and Google. This feature is available to all the Viber users in Nepal, says a statement issued by eSewa.

As an introductory offer, users can enjoy a  10 percent or maximum of Rs 100 cashback on recharge and five percent or maximum Rs 50 on fund transfer, added the statement.

“Besides that, on weekly basis, customers will get a chance to win attractive gifts/vouchers and as a bumper price, one lucky customer will win a laptop.”

Roshan Lamichhane, Chief Operating Officer of eSewa says this is a breakthrough in digital payments in Nepal and it will bring a new dimension to digital payments in the country. “We will continue to innovate and make financial transactions simple, secure, and affordable,” he said

Similarly, Anna Znamenskaya, Chief Growth Officer, Rakuten Viber said, “We have always envisioned Viber to be a lifetime app that is of maximum benefit to its users. One of the ways to make this happen is to ensure that our users have access to a secure alternative platform to make their financial transactions such as top-ups and fund transfer as convenient as possible.”