PayMate India Pvt. Ltd. has signed an agreement with Bank of Ceylon to launch mobile payment and banking services in Sri Lanka, the Mumbai-based mobile-payments provider announced last week.
Bank of Ceylon customers now may use PayMate’s free service to pay electricity, water and telephone bills, transfer funds, and check their accounts, according to PayMate.
The purely text and interactive voice response-based service works on any handset and through any mobile operator, a PayMate spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
“Consumers, who use personal identification numbers to authorize transactions, can send up to a limited amount per transaction” as defined by country’s laws, she says. The sender enters his PIN to authorize the transaction, and PayMate sends a transaction code to his mobile phone to convey to the recipient.
The recipient then presents the transaction code to a registered merchant location. The receiver then has to enter his PIN at the merchant’s terminal to verify the transaction and receive the cash.
Bank of Ceylon has 6 million customers, according to its website, while PayMate each month processes more than 150 million transactions for more than 1 million subscribers over its network in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
PayMate earlier this year indicated its plans to launch a mobile-payments service in Sri Lanka (
