Vodafone M-Pesa, a mobile wallet services firm, has tied up at with Waterhealth India (WHIN) to help it in its cash-collection process at 450 locations across five States — Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

WaterHealth, a leader in running decentralised water purification systems, hopes to reduce the physical effort and ‘leakages’ involved in revenue collections in 36 districts where it offers drinking water solutions to communities. However, the duo refused to share details of the financial arrangement worked out between them.

Vodafone said it won’t charge customers when they upload money into their M-Pesa wallet but will charge 1.25-1.5 per cent when they transact money. Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Suresh Sethi, Business Head (M-Pesa) of Vodafone India, said the service was being offered through 90,000 outlets across the country, with 63 per cent of them located in rural areas.

Digital money Vodafone’s executives will visit each of the WaterHealth centres, collect cash from the operators and convert it into digital money (M-Pesa balance) in their phones. This allows operators to remit the (digital) cash to WaterHealth.

The Chief Operating Officer of WaterHealth International, Vikas Shah, said that besides tackling the challenge of managing a large workforce in the distribution network, the facility would address the problem of leakages.

WaterHealth plans The firm is looking to reach 10 crore people by 2020. “We are going to set up 10,000 plants, each covering a population of 10,000. We have tied up with the civic body in Bangalore and we are going to set up 200 plants, giving access to 1.5 crore customers,” he said.

“We are going to sign about seven such contracts. Reaching 10 crore customers in the next five years should not be a challenge,” he said.

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