This new smartphone payments service has been made available to device users in India.
Idea Cellular has recently announced the launch of its new mobile wallet service, called Idea Money, that is designed to give consumers the ability to complete certain payment transactions, such as recharging their prepaid mobile accounts.
It is also designed to allow utility bell payments DTH recharges, and make online money transfers.
This service was first launched in July in Mumbai and it will be rolled out throughout India through a number of phases, said a source from the company. That said, that individual declined to share the availability timeline for the availability of the mobile wallet across the country. This is far from the only service of this nature that is available within the Indian market. Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Airtel, and other mobile operators are already providing mobile payments options to their customers.
The Idea Money website describes the mobile wallet as a semi-closed prepaid payment service.
That website explained that the service is being offered by Idea Mobile Commerce Services Limited (IMCSL), which obtained its license to provide it through the Reserve Bank of India. Idea stated that “Simply put, it is a prepaid account which can be accessed using your mobile phone or the Internet for conducting a variety of transactions like prepaid mobile recharges, DTH recharges, utility bill payments, money transfers & more.”
At the moment, the number of uses for these mobile payments is limited to certain bills on top of money transfers. It can recharge prepaid mobile services, recharge DTH, pay off utility bills, and send money to specific accounts. Though this does provide consumers with a convenient opportunity to use their smartphones and tablets to make payments, the company is hopeful that the uses will soon be able to broaden.
At the same time that it is focused on rolling out this mobile wallet across the remainder of India, it is also looking into additional uses for the service. This includes the introduction of mobile payments for shopping at stores and restaurants, for example, as well as uses for ticketing transactions. This could help to boost the appeal of the service among consumers who are using their smartphones for a growing number of daily activities.
It now supports real-time smartphone based transactions in a growing number of countries.
M-Pesa, the mobile payments platform that was created by Safaricom, has already been providing digital money systems in a number of different countries, particularly in Africa.
It set the standard for the industry in Kenya, since it was first created in 2007 and has a growing user base.
The strength of M-Pesa has come from providing mobile payments options to populations that have been primarily unbanked or under banked. Today, the company is providing these options to over 16 million people in Kenya so that they will have access to financial services on a basic level for the first time. It has also allowed the service to broaden quite rapidly into other marketplaces, such as India and Afghanistan.
A recent mobile payments news report has now announced a new upgraded platform for the service.
The report was published in Business Daily in Kenya and stated that M-Pesa was upgrading the services that it is offering to a new mobile payments platform that will help to keep it a step ahead of many of the other providers who are setting sights on the same markets, as well as some of the leaders in both developed economies and emerging markets.
The new and upgraded platform will provide expanded mobile payments processing capacity for the service and will allow users to be able to complete post paid utility bill transactions, as well as pay their insurance premiums, and complete other forms of transaction in real time.
The migration of the mobile payments service to the new platform is being handled by Huawei, the telecommunications provider from China. It has been estimated that the first phase will be completed before the end of 2013, and that the entire process will take a total of approximately 18 months.
Michael Joseph, a former CEO of Safaricom, explained that as well as mobile payments of bills, the new upgraded platform will also make it possible for the integration of M-Pesa with other types of vendors, including retail outlets. This will make it possible for in-store real time payments to take place at some point in the not too distant future.
