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Pupil

Saturday, October 15, 2005

mChq introduced with Airtel, Visa, and ICICI

Bangalore and other IT centers in India are very well known in the services sector around the world. However, I want to be able to stress on the fact that atleast some Engineers there want to be able to push ahead with their own ideas for products that can make an impact in day to day life.

Now the difficult part is to find them. It is not a difficult task if your already in India. Some social engineering can get you a lot of information on which company is doing what and when. Of course, I must point out that this is all within the limits of appropriate disclosure.

I was excited to come across Kanishka Agiwal's blog Non Sequitur. He announced his company's first major software release and also provided a link to an article [CIOL.com]. It's a simple and effective idea, but the point is - none of the cellular provider's in my state have actually gotten round to providing micropayments yet. So there. ( I should point out that Japan already has [BBC] an evolved mobile payment solution.)

From the article:

India gets mobile-to-mobile payment option
Airtel, ICICI, Visa introduce mChq, the first mobile-to-mobile payment option
Monday, September 19, 2005

NEW DELHI: Airtel, ICICI Bank and VISA have joined hands to launch mChq, the first mobile-to-mobile payment option in the country, which enables Airtel customers and ICIC Bank Visa cardholders to pay for their purchases using Airtel mobile phones.

The transaction process is one where the retailer/merchant sends an SMS mentioning the amount to the customer. The customer enters his/her personalized PIN number and sends an SMS back to the retailer acknowledging the amount to be paid. Both the parties then get a confirmatory SMS indicating the completion of the transaction.

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