GSM major Idea Cellular today launched a pilot service of mobile-based money remittances for its subscribers in United Arab Emirates (UAE). This service has been developed in association with Tata Communications, UAE-based Etisalat and HSBC India. In the first phase, this service will be extended to its over 2.7 million subscribers in Kerala.
Pradeep Shrivastav, chief [...]

Essar Communications Holdings, the telecom subsidiary of the Ruias-controlled Essar group, has acquired a strategic stake in US-based mobile payment solutions provider Obopay. However, neither the financial terms nor the percentage of stake acquired were disclosed.
“We are excited with our investment in Obopay. The company has introduced significant mobile payment innovations in US [...]

The March edition of Mobile Monday offered some interesting insights into user demographics and behaviour while using cellphones to pay for services or products. About 70 people attended the event, which was sponsored by mobile commerce company Paymate India Pvt. Ltd.
The topic of the evening was ‘wireless commerce’, moderated by panelists who represented the mobile [...]

Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) has partnered with mobile commerce firm PayMate (more) to enable Tata Indicom customers to book domestic flight tickets on the mobile phone.
Customers need to download a application one-time from Tata Zone to experience the service. They can make the payment by providing credit card details on the phone [...]

US-based payment and remittance services provider Obopay is in talks with at least five Indian lenders to offer mobile payment services in the country, its top official said.
“We are in talks with a large public sector bank, a foreign bank and three private sector banks (for the tie-ups). We expect to announce these agreements in [...]

Mobile commerce is the new buzzword doing the rounds of mobile telephony and m-Commerce is on its way to become a significant part of the $1.5 billion mobile value-added services (m-VAS) industry in India.
It’s a fresh lease of life for the m-VAS sector, which till now was hugely dependant on music and content-based downloads. The [...]

“The security agencies are saying that we should have access to data that are being encrypted by services like BlackBerry on mobile phones and then decrypted when the phone reaches its nominated destination,” the source added. RIM does not, or has not been asked, to do this in any other country but [...]

In an attempt to offset their disadvantage of having just 4 branches in India, Barclays Bank has launched a mobile banking service that will enable customers to make banking transactions from their phone, irrespective of its make.
The service is menu-based and the first one in the country to be on the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data [...]

Airtel today announced the launch of a whole range of M-Commerce solutions such as Mobile Money Transfer (MMT), Postpaid Bill Payment and Prepaid Recharge on the mobile phone. It is partnering with ICICI bank, HDFC bank, SBI, Corporation bank and VISA to enable these payments.
The solution has been developed by mChek, a leading provider [...]

Concerned over the safety of transaction through cellular phones, the Reserve Bank today proposed to come out with a regulatory and oversight framework for mobile banking.
Stating that the use of mobile communication for banking transaction would assume greater importance in future, the RBI’s draft ‘Financial Sector Technology Vision 2008-10′ document said, “efforts would be channelized [...]