If you are short of change to pay an auto or taxi driver, or to recharge the prepaid phone card of your child or parent, help is on the way from an emerging breed of mobile payment service providers.
Mobile commerce, which in India has been limited primarily to basic banking transactions, purchase of travel tickets and payment of some utility bills, is finally taking off with banks, cellular operators and payment service providers coming together to find solutions that comply with regulatory guidelines.
Security, a prime concern with banking regulators, has been a hindrance to the growth of mobile commerce services such as the so-called mobile wallet, which helps make payments at retail outlets through text messages or Internet-enabled phones.
Hand-held convenience: With the expansion of mobile commerce offerings, customers in India could use mobile phones to make financial transactions such as paying for taxi fare and recharging prepaid phone cards. (Photo: Madhu Kapparath/ Mint)The Reserve Bank of India, for one, had issued guidelines against creation of the mobile wallet, a derivative of a phone firm’s master bank account, from which millions of subscribers can be served on their mobile phones.
Californian mobile payment service provider Obopay Inc. and Bangalore’s mChek India Payment Systems Pvt. Ltd are among a fast-expanding breed of mobile payment service providers which have planned offerings that work within the guidelines and bring the convenience of mobile transactions.
Obopay, for instance, has a debit card-like model in place. “Here, the wallet is not created, but the (customer’s) bank account itself is linked with the mobile phone,” says Balachandran Unni, vice-president, business development and alliances, Obopay Payment Services Pvt. Ltd, the local unit of Obopay Inc. The firm offers mobile wallet-based transactions in the US and plans to launch the bank account-linked services in India, too. “Respective banks with whom we have partnered will be launching this in three to four weeks,” says Unni.
International remittance is another service that Obopay plans to bring to India. Unlike what Western Union, the most popular service provider for such transactions, typically does, Obopay is planning to remit money from overseas directly to the bank account linked to the phone. The customer would be then notified of the transaction through a text message. This service too should be operational this year, expects Unni.
Western Union typically charges customers around $4, or about Rs158, to transfer, say, $1,000 from Dubai, which is considerably less than the cost of a bank transfer: $15 to send $1,000 from, say, the US and other countries. Mobile payment service providers won’t say exactly how much, but transfers through mobile phones are expected to lower the transaction costs.
Source:-http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/13232657/Mobile-commerce-gets-ready-for.html
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