Comments
Have you ever tried using your mobile as a wallet at a mall, restaurant or anywhere else? Though at a nascent stage, the mobile wallet concept appears to be catching on.
“Making people pay via mobile is a global challenge and YPayCash aims to revolutionise the payment system,” says Ravi Jagannathan, Vice-Chairman, eMudra, and Director, YPayCash, a 100 per cent subsidiary of eMudra Group.
After verifying the results of a trial and obtaining a licence from the RBI, the company (YPayCash Software Solutions) has rolled out the mobile retail payment system in Tamil Nadu.
“We plan to go pan-India, but that will take another 3-4 years,” he said.
In Tamil Nadu, the company has tied up with 4,000 merchants for this.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm amongst merchants, particularly those who neither have a POS (Point of Sale) machine nor a system to capture the transactions.
“We have tied up with 55-60 merchants in Pondy Bazaar in Chennai. These small merchants did not have a POS and were only dealing in cash transactions,” he said.
The company is looking to rope in 25,000 merchants (in Tamil Nadu) in the next 8-10 months.
“We tied up with Karur Vysya Bank here for the mobile wallet, but it works for any bank, any mobile,” Ravi added.
Download app
“Android users can download the app from Google Play Store and BlackBerry users from BlackBerry App World. The registration will not take more than two minutes and once approved, the user can transfer money from his bank account.
This is a sort of prepaid wallet. Users can recharge the mobile wallet as and when they see a need to use it,” he said.
The mobile-based retail payment system is expected to come in handy, but Ravi believes that it will not be able to replace cash transactions in totality.
“Limited penetration of the debit cards (15 per cent) and credit cards (2 per cent) have constrained non-cash transaction. Mobiles, with a penetration of over 60 per cent, have the potential to drive non-cash models.
“Mobile payments are expected to reach $26 billion by 2014,” says Ravi.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.