Vodafone and ICICI Bank are offering the M-Pesa mobile money service in New Delhi and Mumbai, according to reports.
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M-Pesa's service supports funds transfers, utility payment, remittances, deposits and withdrawals. The service is expected to launch in the Indian city of Lucknow shortly, according to ZDNet. M-Pesa was previously made available in Kolkata, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan. The service was launched in December in India, and is expected to cover the entire country within the next year, including the tech centers of Chennai and Bangalore, ZDNet reports.
ICICI Bank and Vodafone did not return requests for comment by deadline.
M-Pesa allows consumers who don't have traditional banking relationships to use their mobile devices to execute payments and other financial transactions. The service was successful in Kenya and other African countries, and is one of the sparks of an international trend toward using mobile payments to build financial services in developing markets.
ICICI Bank also supports Movida, a mobile payments partnership between Visa and Monitise.
Payvia, Standard Bank of South Africa, Visa, MasterCard and Western Union are all pursuing emerging markets. Kipochi, an African online company, plans to connect M-Pesa to the virtual currency Bitcoin; and Google is also pursuing emerging market payments.
