'Mobile wallets will be the in-thing'

We are looking forward to more and more people using the mobile platform for money transfer and have reason to believe we will be laughing all the way to the bank in the next three to four years. This is because the government and banks are encouraging cash and cheque transactions in the electronic mode, and mobile phones will account for a large pie.

The biggest stumbling block is the stringent cap on the amount that can be transacted. So raising the limit from the current Rs 5,000 per transaction and Rs 25,000 per month would work wonders for PayMate.

Pre-paid transactions above Rs 2,000 require a whole lot of paperwork, including KYC identification and verification. Customers find this cumbersome. Relaxing pre-paid mobile-banking regulations will encourage the use of the incredibly handy mobile phone for bank transactions. Let’s not forget, more than half the mobile users in our country are unbanked and use pre-paid.

In 2013, we plan to expand our merchant network as well as build a money transfer network, which will together constitute 15,000 points of presence. This would help us increase the number of pre-paid wallets in the country.

Ajay Adiseshan is a serial entrepreneur who founded PayMate India along with Probir Roy in 2006. PayMate is a popular payment solutions company in the Asian sub-continent that connects your mobile to your money and helps you transact in a wireless manner.