Orange to take mobile money to Europe this year

LONDON May 26 (Reuters) - France Telecom's (FTE.PA) mobile arm Orange plans to introduce mobile money transfer services in eastern European by year end, becoming a European pioneer of services seen as a potential major growth area for mobile operators.

"We are going to move pretty fast. The challenges are regulators and banking relationships," Olaf Swantee told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Open Mobile Summit industry conference in London.

"I am confident before the end of this year we will have some services in place," Swantee said. Mobile financial services have started to grow mostly in emerging markets such as Kenya, but Swantee said he sees demand for such services also in eastern Europe were many people work away from their home town or abroad.

Juniper Research has estimated that more than 500 million people around the world will use mobile money transfer services by 2014, principally in developing countries.

Telecom trade body GSMA has predicted operators could make $5 billion a year from financial services by offering bank services to 364 million "unbanked" consumers by 2012. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by David Holmes)