PayMate forays into Retail with its Voice and SMS based Mobile Payment Solution

Powers Future Bazaar, Planet M, CRS Health and Gold Cabs to begin with and announces aggressive growth plans for its offline merchant base

January 3rd 2007: After their success in the online category, PayMate India, a leading M-commerce solutions company, is now aggressively targeting offline merchant sign-ups which include large chains to stand-alone establishments in any form of retail. SMS has been the driving platform for online and remote payments thus far but the company has now introduced a voice based module specifically keeping in mind the unique requirements of the retail industry. To begin with this solution will be implemented by Future Bazaar, CRS Health, Gold Cabs and Planet M in the coming weeks.

Speaking about the company’s growth plans in 2007, Ajay Adiseshann, Founder and MD, PayMate says “We have achieved significant success in the online space and we now have the opportunity and challenge to make PayMate available on the shop floor as well. There is no doubt a genuine user benefit of added convenience and security that PayMate offers so we hope to implement our solution at an equally rapid pace in the offline category as well. We are expanding our merchant base rapidly and are making sure we reach out to our stakeholders, both consumers and merchants, in as many ways as possible enabling ease of use.”

To make implementation simple, PayMate will offer its merchants options of several transaction interfaces depending upon the facilities available at the point of sale. These include an internet browser, any mobile handset, any landline phone or a PayMate EDC machine. Irrespective of interface the merchant will have real-time access to the transaction log and reports at any given time.

In addition to implementing PayMate online, Future Bazaar will also use PayMate to facilitate a ‘SMS-to-buy’ platform wherein all the customers have to do is send an SMS to buy a product instead of walking into a store or logging onto the website. Commenting on the tie-up Sankarson Banerjee, CEO, Future Bazaar, says “In our business of virtual retailing the mobile phone is a powerful device to connect with customers. PayMate is a unique solution to grow this space since customers can use their mobile phones to pay securely from anywhere without divulging their card details. This will potentially open up many new avenues for customer interaction for our business”.

Gold Cabs which has recently launched their international caliber ‘Dial-a-Cab’ service in Mumbai will now allow passengers to pay for their tariffs via PayMate. “Convenience lies at the core of our offering and PayMate offers an ideal solution for the drivers and the customer with no nuances of carrying cash or struggling for change. We are proud to be among the first few globally along with Japan and Thailand to implement mobile payments for taxi fares” says Shilpa Athavale, MD, Gold Cabs, which plans to grow its fleet to 200 vehicles by next month.

Talking about over-the-counter and home delivery type operations, Rahul Chahdha, Director, CRS Health says “It offers a great payment solution for our DTH services which is currently limited to cash pick-up by the delivery boy. It also offers an added security and convenience to customers paying in-store. While this may take some time to become really popular, we would like to be partners in driving this growth and be the early ones to offer this service to our customers.”

PayMate User Manual

PayMate is currently being offered to Citibank bank credit card and banking customers and will roll out services with other leading banks shortly. To use PayMate, Citibank customers need to sign up for this service free with the bank by simply sending “PAYMATE” as an SMS to 2484. The customer will then be called back and registered for the service following which they can conveniently pay at any of PayMate’s accredited merchants via a single SMS.

On receiving this SMS, the bank will verify the user’s mobile number with the account and on confirmation will debit the account accordingly. The merchant and the customer will receive a confirmation message from the bank approving the transaction. The entire transaction takes place at the cost of a single premium SMS.

PayMate will shortly be available on several leading websites including travel & hospitality, consumer products, matrimony, jobs, apparels, astrology, gifts, NGO’s etc. The company is also in the process of tying up with several offline merchants such as telco’s, utilities, insurance companies, cable and broadband services, tele-shopping etc and will be announcing its tie-ups in a phased manner.

PayMate offers a secure payment solution as no credit/debit card information is ever disclosed during the transaction process. The trust model is based on the recommendations by Ernst & Young; which provides the security measures for both the bank as well as the customer.

About PayMate India Pvt. Ltd.

PayMate India Private Limited is a mobile commerce solutions company based in Mumbai. PayMate India has been spun off by Coruscant Tec, a mobile content developer and aggregator, to offer comprehensive mobile commerce solutions.

PayMate was founded in May 2006 by Ajay Adiseshann, Founder and MD, Coruscant Tec and Co-founder, Probir Roy. In a short span of time PayMate India has partnered with Citibank to offer a unique mobile payment solution.

PayMate India is funded by Silicon Valley based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures who have helped build some of the world’s leading brands and companies like Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems. For more information log on to www.paymate.co.in