Credit Card in your cellphone
Convergence....it's finally happening and happening in India. When I was coding for smartcards sometime back in 1999, one of the guy in Singapore used to tell me that they were working on three in one smartcard which will work as your data storage, your mobile phone SIM and your credit card. Now in India, we have at least two in one where we can use our mobile phone as credit card. The service is actually available from ICICI Bank but on a skeletal basis in Mumbai and Delhi only.
Christened ‘M-Cheque’, the service virtually transforms a cellphone into a regular ICICI Bank credit card. The bank recently forged a technical partnership with Mumbai-based ‘A Little World’ and roped Airtel as its telecom service partner.
Here’s how it works. At the point of purchase, the shopkeeper takes your cellphone number and sends an SMS to ‘A Little World’ in encrypted format. Since A Little World has an extensive cellphone database of all MCheque clients, it forwards the encrypted SMS to ICICI Bank.
The bank, in turn verifies your credit limit and fires another SMS through ‘A Little World’ to your cellphone requesting confirmation. Once you do that, you can walk away with your product. The entire chain happens in a jiffy! “M-Cheque is simple and can go where no credit card has managed to go so far. It may be used to pay for groceries, coffee, dosa, pizza, and even a movie ticket. The facility can be used to buy cheap products worth as low as Rs 10 using the mobile,” says B Madhivanan, General Manager, Retail Assets Products Group at ICICI Bank.
“The swiping machines provided by banks cost between Rs 9,000 and Rs 11,000, while nearly every merchant establishment owner, including tiny ones these days, own a mobile phone. This translates into a huge possibility for shops as they can easily accept mobile phone-driven credit purchases at a minimum cost,” he adds.
ICICI Bank has started the project with 50 merchants establishments each in Delhi and Mumbai. At present, some 1,000 cellphone users are availing of the facility. Cellphones, however, need to have a 32K SIM card to operate the M-Cheque service.
Christened ‘M-Cheque’, the service virtually transforms a cellphone into a regular ICICI Bank credit card. The bank recently forged a technical partnership with Mumbai-based ‘A Little World’ and roped Airtel as its telecom service partner.
Here’s how it works. At the point of purchase, the shopkeeper takes your cellphone number and sends an SMS to ‘A Little World’ in encrypted format. Since A Little World has an extensive cellphone database of all MCheque clients, it forwards the encrypted SMS to ICICI Bank.
The bank, in turn verifies your credit limit and fires another SMS through ‘A Little World’ to your cellphone requesting confirmation. Once you do that, you can walk away with your product. The entire chain happens in a jiffy! “M-Cheque is simple and can go where no credit card has managed to go so far. It may be used to pay for groceries, coffee, dosa, pizza, and even a movie ticket. The facility can be used to buy cheap products worth as low as Rs 10 using the mobile,” says B Madhivanan, General Manager, Retail Assets Products Group at ICICI Bank.
“The swiping machines provided by banks cost between Rs 9,000 and Rs 11,000, while nearly every merchant establishment owner, including tiny ones these days, own a mobile phone. This translates into a huge possibility for shops as they can easily accept mobile phone-driven credit purchases at a minimum cost,” he adds.
ICICI Bank has started the project with 50 merchants establishments each in Delhi and Mumbai. At present, some 1,000 cellphone users are availing of the facility. Cellphones, however, need to have a 32K SIM card to operate the M-Cheque service.
posted by Rajat at
1:26 AM
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