My Mobile Payments Ltd (MMPL), a mobile payment service provider, announced the launch of ‘Money-on-Mobile’ (MOM), an M-Wallet service which permits a mobile phone subscriber to purchase a wide range of goods and services using the mobile phone instead of paying by cash, cheque, debit or credit cards, for the Indian market.
MOM allows the Indian consumer to load their mobile phones with cash of various denominations, minimum being INR 20, at retail touch points and then use this virtual money to top-up any prepaid mobile recharge and DTH recharge, pay postpaid mobile bills, utility bills such as electricity and gas and purchase airline, bus and movie tickets. MOM’s service operates independent of the consumer’s mobile operator or bank, and hence any mobile subscriber can avail of its services through the SMS or mobile application-based platform.
MOM was launched for the B2B market in India in 2010, and in the year 2011 received RBI’s permission to offer the semi-closed m-wallet for the consumer market nationally. With a strong network of 82,000 retailer touch points pan-India and a presence in 300 cities, MOM has successfully boarded 500,000 subscribers and touches a business volume of IN R 20 million per day.
In a country like India where mobile phones are more widespread than the financial systems, mobile payment is the next big alternative payment method. MOM does all paperless transactions and it is in line with RBI’s vision of making 70% of the financial transactions paperless by end of 2012.
MOM recently received a funding of $29.7 million from Calpian, Inc. (CLPI.OB), a Dallas, Texas-based U.S. public company.
