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| Corp Bank |
eMudhra Consumer Services Ltd, a Bangalore-based consumer technology solutions and service provider, on Wednesday announced the pilot launch of its retail mobile payment platform, YpayCash, for Corporation Bank.
Under the pilot launch, Corporation Bank customers in Mumbai and Bangalore will be able to pay for retail transaction directly through their mobile phones without divulging any personal details such as mobile or bank account numbers.YPayCash, the retail mobile payment system, is developed using 2D barcodeand digital signature (PKI) technology. For availing mobile wallet, the user as well any merchant or retailer or shop owner, needs to be Corporation Bank’s customer and have to register this mobile payment facility.
Unlike other mobile payment forms, YPayCash doesn’t require point of sale (PoS) terminals at the retailers’ end. It uses mobile phones for entire payment transactions and fully leverages the existing telecom infrastructure, which lowers retail transaction cost for the merchants.
According to Ramnath Pradeep, Corporation Bank’s chairman and managing director, the cost of cash payments for banks remains very high and by using mobile payments and cashless transactions the cost can be reduced.
“Using mobile payment technology, banking services can be taken to rural masses in a very easy and convenient way. YPayCash has the potential to bring a remarkable change in the way people make payments,” said Pradeep.
Corporation Bank has over a crore customers and among them 10-20 lakh customers are being considered the potential users of YPayCash facility. Also, the bank has around 25000 merchants with PoS terminals, which are considered important to drive the mobile payment service to customers.
The customers need to have a normal mobile phone with Corporation Bank’s mobile payment application installed on it. Similarly, the merchants need a GPRS-enabled camera mobile.
While, carrying out transaction, the user need to login the bank’s payment application and insert digits or the payment amount and accordingly the application will generate a dynamic 2D barcode image on the phone’s screen.
On the other side, the merchant logs in the bank’s payment application and uses the mobile phone’s camera to scan the 2D barcode image from the customer’s phone. And within a few seconds, the transaction gets completed as the bank’s server validates and confirms the transaction. Subsequently, sends payment and account balance information via SMS to both the customer and merchant.
According to Ravi Jagannathan, eMudhra’s CEO and managing director, the mobile payment technology will have high growth given the number of mobile phones in India.
“Considering the total mobiles, the potential market would be close to around 1-1.5 per cent of the total base in the next 2-3 years,” said Jagannathan.
GPRS tech better than SMS in mobile payments
He added that mobile phones manufactured after 2001-2002 at large have JAVA-based applications and generating 2D bar codes on such phones is very easy. With telcos offering 3G services in India, Jagannathan stressed GPRS technology would be better in delivering mobile payments compared to SMS.
Moreover, he concluded that the dynamic 2D bar codes are highly secured and reliable for mobile payment.
