Consumer adoption is the biggest challenge: PayMate

Posted on | September 20, 2006 |

Mobile payments enabler PayMate has brought in Akshay Sharma as AVP - Marketing, PR & Brand Development.

Akshay was Marketing Manager at MTV, where he was instrumental in executing projects such as the Lycra MTV Style Awards, MTV Youth Icon of the Year, Kitni Mast Hai Zindagi (MTV’s first ever TV serial). Prior to MTV, Akshay had stints with Radio Mirchi, ITC and Lokhandwala Hotels.

PayMate has currently partnered with Citibank to offer its customers the PayMate option. A Citibank customer can use PayMate to make payments at storefronts of these merchants as of now.

Rediff, Naukri, Jeevan Saathi, 99 acres, Cleartrip.com, Travel Mart, Big Tree (Movie ticket bookings) and Telebrands (Teleshopping)

I believe PayMate has to work on the following three fronts to activate the ecosystem.

• Banks: Get more banks in its fold to increase number of potential userbase
• Merchants: Having large number of merchants who accept payment through PayMate increases its attractiveness
• Customers: This is obvious. After all money is ingested into the ecosystem by the customers

Akshay rightly points out that consumer adoption of the new technology and payment method will be the biggest challenge.

“Our biggest challenge is going to be consumer adoption. While VAS has taken off in a big way, people in India are not yet exposed to the thought of being able to transact through their mobile phones. I guess it’s also hard to believe that wireless transactions can be so convenient, easy and secure, and that’s exactly what we aim to address through our marketing initiatives in the times to come.

Category: Payments

Comments

One Response to “Consumer adoption is the biggest challenge: PayMate”

1. GK
   September 20th, 2006 @ 11:09 am

   nice educative piece.Keep it up.

   GK

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