Bolivia, officially The Republic of Bolivia, was named after Simon Bolivar, and is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil on the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina on the south, and Chile and Peru on the west. It has a population of some 9.5 million people, approximately one million of which have access to the internet at this time.
One of the poorest and least developed Latin American nations, Bolivia has the region’s lowest credit card penetration rates and remains a predominately a cash based economy.
Mindful of this, cash-based processor Ukash recently announced that Bolivia is the latest country where their vouchers will be available at convienient local shops, thus allowing Bolivian consumers to start spending online.
Bolivia also has low mobile and second lowest fixed-line teledensity. Mobile telephony suffers from poor quality of service and inadequate network capacity, and whilst premium SMS (PSMS) is not yet a viable billing mechanism in this market, pay-per-call billing via international premium rate numbers is.
In February this year Oruro became the first Bolivian entity with full mobile telephony coverage. Bolivia also plans to launch its own satellite, to be named Tupac Katari, primarily to provide telecom services in isolated rural areas.
In conclusion, if you are currently receiving traffic from this emerging market, you should consider deploying cash and phone payment methods as your primary, not secondary, billing mechanisms.
