Mahindra Comviva brings its payments to rural India
According to Mahindra, only 13% of rural India is connected to the internet
Mahindra Comviva has launched Payplus Aadhaar Pay, a merchant payment acceptance solution, as it targets the rural areas of India.
The Aadhaar infrastructure, created by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), onboards customers and provide them with online services. UIDAI collects the biometric and demographic data of residents, stores them in a centralised database, and issues a 12-digit unique identity number – Aadhaar – to each resident.
Cloud-based Payplus Aadhaar Pay will use all that and offers bank’s or acquirer’s merchant partners a “unified payment acceptance platform” that enables the acceptance of cards, digital wallets, UPI (India’s Unified Payments Interface) and mVisa across channels – such as in-store, apps and the web.
Srinivas Nidugondi, SVP and head, mobile financial solutions, Mahindra Comviva, says India’s digital payment initiative has the “potential to bring massive social and economic transformation by formalising the rural economy, which will not only help to bring the financially excluded into the mainstream economy but also help in generating new jobs and opportunities”.
However, according to Mahindra, with only 13% of rural India connected to the internet, and the low financial inclusion ROI for banks, the digital payments revolution has not grown beyond the urban centres of India. The firm says the challenge is not the unavailability of apps in rural market but the availability of affordable digital payment solutions that work in a 2G environment.
