India's My Mobile Payments Ltd., a mobile payment service provider, today announced that, with a little help from Dallas-based payment processor Calpian inc., it is launching its Money-on-Mobile mobile wallet to the Indian consumer market.
The service, which is not tied to any mobile service provider of bank, allows mobile phone subscribers to pay for a wide range of goods and services by mobile phone.
Consumer can load their MOM m-wallet with cash at one of 82,000 retail touch points (expected to be 2 million by yearend) and use it to pay for electricity, gas and mobile bills and top-ups, as well as airline, bus and movie tickets.
MOM was launched for the B2B market in India in 2010, and last year received RBI's permission to offer the semi-closed m-wallet for the consumer market. The service has 500,000 subscribers and does a business volume of INR 20 million ($358,422) daily.
"In a country like India where mobile phones are more widespread than the financial systems, mobile payment is the next big alternative payment method," said Shashank Joshi, managing director of Money-on-Mobile. "MOM does all paperless transactions and it is in line with RBI's vision of making 70 percent of the financial transactions paperless by end of 2012. MOM is committed to ensuring consumers the ability to make safe, convenient and flexible payments."
MOM recently received funding of $29.7 million from Calpian. "We believe that MOM is well positioned to take advantage of the promising mobile payment market in India," said Calpian Chairman and CEO Harold Montgomery. "Calpian's management team has been associated with the electronic payment processing business for the last twenty-five years in the United States and we are glad to enter the Indian market by partnering with MOM."
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