Tag: icici bank

First contactless mobile payments in India to be launched by ICICI Bank

| March 18, 2016

The financial institution claims that it has chosen NFC technology in order to enhance transaction security.

ICICI Bank has recently announced that it will be offering the first contactless mobile payments service in India, after having looked into the various options and decided that NFC technology is the best way to keep transaction data safe throughout the process.

This will make it possible for consumers with one of their credit or debit cards to pay using a smartphone.

Of course, this will require that consumers who want to use the contactless mobile payments will need to shop at a store or restaurant with an NFC reader terminal. At the moment, they are in the vast minority in India. Still, the bank has decided that this is the best way to ensure that consumers keep their sensitive data safe throughout the transaction process, which is what drove them to make this choice. Users of the bank’s Pockets app and who have the right type of device will be eligible to use this service.

This represents the first time that Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology is used for contactless mobile payments in India.

ICICI Bank - Contactless Mobile PaymentsThe HCE tech makes it possible for consumers to be able to use their smartphones as a kind of virtual card so that payments can be made without having to bring the actual plastic credit and banking cards into the shop. The cards compatible with this service are those that have been issued by ICICI Bank, including debit, Visa and MasterCard.

The virtual credit and debit card data is stored in the secure cloud server from the bank. Just as the service requires a merchant’s point of sale to include an NFC reader, it also means that shoppers who want to use these mobile payments will also need to have NFC technology enabled phones. Most smartphones in India do not have this tech, at the moment, which means that there will likely be quite a limited user base upon the initial launch of this service.

Contactless mobile payments using NFC technology are growing in popularity among smartphone wallet companies around the world, including tech, credit card and other financial giants. Among the most well known are Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Mobile wallet will be rolling out from the State Bank of India

| August 20, 2015

The new payments app will be called the SBI Buddy and it is going to be launched by the financial institution.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has now announced that it intends to jump into the rapidly growing mobile wallet category, that already features large players in the country such as Pocket, from ICICI Bank, and PayZapp, from HDFC.

The bank has revealed that it is planning to take part in this market, getting in while it is still very young.

A recent report from UBS and KPMG has shown that the mobile banking using population of India is the youngest in the world. In fact, those using their smartphones for purposes such as checking accounts and for mobile wallet apps are notably younger than the users in Europe and the United States. That report cautioned banks by saying that if they do not establish solid mobile banking strategies, they are at risk of losing their customers, and failing to be able to take advantage of sizeable cross-selling opportunities over the short term, while harming their competitive advantage over the longer term.

The report explained that banks are now taking on strategies that involve mobile wallet and banking apps.

India mobile walletIn this way, banks of all sizes are taking on an attitude of “mobile first,” while the larger institutions are working on gathering up technology startups that will give them the ability to keep up with the rapidly changing and evolving industry. The report stated that “Indian customers demonstrate the highest likelihood of changing banks driven by the availability of better mobile banking services.”

It is also important to point out that SBI isn’t the only financial institution that is currently working on developing a mobile banking or payment app to enter into the industry at this point. YES Bank and Axis Bank have also recently revealed that they will be launching their own mobile apps and that these wallets will be available to customers very soon.

The SBI Buddy mobile wallet application will soon become available to current customers of the bank, as well as to certain other subscribers. The bank has already partnered up with a number of merchants, which mean that once an m-banking account has been opened by the consumer through the mobile app, that person will be able to use mobile payments without having to download each merchant’s individual apps.