India’s ICICI Bank Curries NextGen Consumers For Mobile Payments

India’s ICICI Bank launches a mobile payments service built by Movida, the Indian joint venture between Visa and mobile money specialist firm Monetise.

The service allows ICICI Bank payment card holders to pay their bills, order pre-paid plane and bus fairs, and purchase movie tickets through their mobile phones. Movida built this service with phone compatibility in mind, giving even the most basic phone access to Movida through a menu-based USSD mobile technology or an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) available in multiple languages.

The service is designed to work across all mobile networks using any payment card, including Visa and non-Visa cards. The cardholders will be able to make payments through Movida’s secured connection after linking their payment card to their mobile phone number registered with ICICI Bank. Their card account information is kept secure by a unique PIN number.

Despite the copious amounts of mobile payment solutions available in the US, consumers still hold onto their plastic cards and crumpled-up cash, but why?

According to Harvard Business Review, “India has a large un-banked population because of the challenge of reach and affordability. But with 840+ million mobile subscribers, mobile banking can provide a fast, inexpensive, easy, convenient and secure channel for customers across India to carry out banking transactions.”

The truth is, US consumers don’t have a strong demand for mobile payments at this point. We’re seeing an increase in mobile payment services across under-developed countries because these solutions act as basic legacy infrastructures.

For now, Americans are more comfortable with swiping their credit cards and using the bills, but at one point, we were also content using carrier pigeons. Roll on, innovation.