Bangalore: The Indian arm of Citigroup Inc. aims to commercially launch a touch-based, mobile phone payment technology by December, provided multiple players invest in the required infrastructure.
This follows a 26-week pilot project in Bangalore using near-field communication (NFC) technology with around 3,000 customers, 250 merchant locations and nearly 50,000 purchases worth Rs2.6 crore.
NFC allows users to tap their mobile phone against a reader terminal and make a purchase. Citi partnered with phone maker Nokia Oyj and telecom operator Vodafone Essar Ltd for the trial.
Vijay Ramchandran, chief marketing officer at Citi South Asia, said, “We are in talks with three-four banks, three telecom operators, two-three technology providers and two phone makers.”
This is for deployment in India and some Asian markets.