- Enables 7.5 million Bank of Ceylon customers to access this simple text-based Mcommerce solution from any handset.
- Services include instant payments of phone and utility bills, account balance inquiries, mini statements and transfer funds.
- Mutually exclusive customers of Airtel and Bank of Ceylon can enjoy instant post paid account bill payment and pre paid recharge connections over SMS.
Bharti Airtel Lanka together with Bank of Ceylon and Ceylon’s mobile payment facility, BOC Paymate, India’s leading mobile payments company, today announced the launch of the MCommerce solution to all Airtel subscribers in Sri Lanka. These services are available to all customers of Airtel, enabling them to make instant payments of phone and utility bills, account balance inquiries, mini statements, fund transfers and also, instant post paid account bill payment and pre paid recharge connections, using their BOC account .
This simple text based platform offers Airtel and Bank of Ceylon customers the convenience of making utility bill payments for water, electricity and telephone along with account balance inquiries, mini statements and fund transfers through SMS. Additionally, Airtel recharge facilities as well as postpaid bill-payment facilities are also available to customers over SMS. Bank of Ceylon customers who are already registered with the Airtel network can continue to use their current connection and enjoy the service over their Airtel mobile. This service does not require any GPRS/EDGE connectivity nor does it require an application download as it is an SMS based service which works on any mobile making this service handset-agnostic, and therefore accessible to the entire 7.5 million customer base of Bank of Ceylon
Amali Nanayakkara, CEO Bharti Airtel Lanka stated “The Airtel mCommerce solution offers all Bank of Ceylon customers the opportunity and convenience of transacting need based services over SMS. Through this co-created initiative to enrich customers of Bank of Ceylon and Airtel we are happy to engineer yet another avenue of service delight while facilitating a paradigm shift in the way customers conduct economic transactions”.
Dr. Gamini Wickramasinghe, Chairman, Bank of Ceylon stated, “With the changing lifestyles ushered in by the mobile phone over the last few years, a significant opportunity to combine banking and mobile services has arisen. The mobile phone is increasingly becoming the one-stop-shop for customers and a simple and secure service like the BOC Paymate Solution offered over Airtel, provides unparalleled convenience to all our customers”.
Ajay Adiseshann, MD and Founder, PayMate said, “PayMate along with our local partners, Fortuna Global, are excited to bring the first SMS based mobile payment service in a country where mobile penetration is growing rapidly. The potential is enormous considering Airtel is Sri Lanka's fastest growing Mobile Network and Bank of Ceylon is Sri Lanka's largest bank. PayMate's edge over any other m-payment platform lies not only its convenient, anytime-anywhere utility but also in its incredible simplicity”.