Citibank To Launch A Trial Project For Mobi-Payment With Vodafone And Nokia
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It looks like payment gateways has become a main attraction for financial services giants as Citibank India, consumer banking arm of Citigroup, has tied-up with Vodafone Essar Ltd and Nokia India to launch a pilot project testing its Mobi-payment solution in India.
The pilot project is said to be one of the largest ever taken and is currently launched in Bangalore.The mobi-payment technology which the Citibank is testing is called NFC(near field communication) allowing users to make payments by just intercepting their mobile phone against a reader terminal.Thus the mobiles in future could be used in the same way as wallets.
The technology was also tested in New York and has undergone similar trials in other countries like Singapore although has not seen much success off lately. Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices (MOBILE AND READER TERMINAL) over a 10 centimetre distance.
NFC as a mobi-payment technology has not seen much success in India despite being deployed by few other companies. Citibank is banking on 400+ million cell phone users to drive demand for m-payment gateways. The tie-up with two big telecom players may also provide the right kind of exposure to this ambitious project.
WATBlog earlier did a story on feasibility of Mobi-payments and also the various technology that could be utilized to proliferate Mobi-payment uses. According to Gartner, the number of users making payment via mobile will be more than 190 million by 2012.
In India the success of NFC as m-payment gateway largely depends on users who find other mobi-payment solutions like SMS based and auto-IVR etc cumbersome to use. The technology has also seen security concern raised by few users in the past.
Telecom companies through such tie-ups are looking at increasing their offerings which may accrue financial benefits in the future.Thus it could be said that India is leading the race in M-commerce although it has seen laggard performance in E-commerce till now.
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