VISA's mobile payment platform to go live in India next month

The Visa-promoted Movida mobile payments platform will go live next month with the second largest private sector lender HDFC Bank as its banking partner, a Visa top official has said.

"Movida will go live next month...on HDFC Bank it should be live. Other banks are in the pipeline," says Visa Country Manager for India and South Asia Uttam Nayak.

The work of integration and testing is on at present, before the product goes live, he said.

Movida, an equal joint venture between Visa and the LSE-listed mobile banking solutions company Monitise, had in February this year announced a tie-up with HDFC Bank for the platform.

The product is pitted against the interbank mobile payment service (IMPS) launched by the National Payments Corporation of India, which already has 50 banks as members.

Nayak said even though it is starting up with only HDFC Bank, the company is in talks with other lenders to grow the network of banks as the solution is designed for inter-bank operability.

He, however, declined to give any names or the number of banks the company is in talks with.

Nayak said to start with, HDFC Bank account-holders will be able to do "remote" transactions like money transfer to other account-holders, mobile payments and ticketing, while the next phase will involve "face-to-face" transactions like merchant payments.

When asked about IMPS, he said, Movida will be competing with the NPCI platform, but it has some differences.

The IMPS is an account-to-account transfer of money and requires a special registration, while the Movida solution will allow for a card-to-card transfer of cash using the mobile platform, he said.

Nayak said that NPCI's IMPS being the entrenched player has got an advantage in the sphere, but the market opportunity to be tapped is very large which gives space to newer players as well.