Mobile money transfer service M-Pesa is to be launched in India by the end of this year after Vodafone India and ICICI Bank formed a partnership that will see customers in the country make cash deposits and withdrawals from designated outlets.
“M-Pesa will offer basic financial services to people who are beyond reach of traditional banking services,” said Pieters.
Kocchar on the other hand hopes that M-Pesa will help India achieve greater levels of financial inclusion.
The launch will first be implemented in West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, before a rollout in the other parts of the country.
Vodafone may have decided to launch the service in the country due to its population of over 1.2 billion people, more than the population of the entire African continent.
M-Pesa has performed exceptionally well in Kenya since its launch, which saw Vodafone expand the service to other countries.
Just recently, Vodafone announced plans to launch mobile wallet for all its markets by 2013, something that will see the company reach over 400 million customers spread out on a 50 partners in all the 5 continents it operates in.
Vodafone said it will use the Near Field Communications (NFC) technology for the service, and will rely on CorFire’s mobile wallet solution CorPay — which works in NFC and non-NFC environments.
