Global digital operator Veon announced on Wednesday that it has a launched a “Geolocation Gateway” that offers location-based APIs for enterprise developers , with its subsidiary Beeline Uzbekistan the first of its stable of operators to implement it.
The Geolocation Gateway – developed by Veon, Nokia and Infobip using the GSMA Open Gateway framework for universal open APIs for enterprise developers – allows applications to determine the location of devices. Veon said this enables a wide range of use cases, from proximity-based commercial services to reducing fraud in financial services, as well as supporting location-based emergency response.
For example, financial institutions could determine if an individual is actually present during a transaction such as an ATM withdrawal or a credit card payment. The gateway could also enable companies to send targeted communications to consenting customers based on proximity to an event, restaurant or shop.
The latter is the use case now being implemented by Beeline Uzbekistan, which is working with a local pizza restaurant chain and Veon Adtech to use Geolocation Gateway APIs for “precision marketing”.
Vein group CEO Kaan Terzioglu said the solution will be scaled to other Veon operators, and is also available for licensing by other mobile operators.
“The solutions that our teams have developed and started implementing in Uzbekistan enables the usage of location-based anonymized data in a wide range of digital applications, empowering users, businesses and public sector service providers alike,” he said in a statement.
Veon added that the Geolocation Gateway complies with international privacy laws and data protection regulations, as it provides only anonymized data to third-party service providers, while all user-specific data remains held solely by the mobile operator as the trusted party. Meanwhile, for commercial apps, “all communication with individuals will be based on the legal permission policies of the jurisdiction.”
