Suvidha Starnet Pvt. Ltd. will invest more than 5 billion rupees (US$113 million or 80 million euros) to expand the operations of its Beam mobile-wallet service, a sign of the growing confidence in India’s mobile-payments market.
Beam enables consumers to pay bills, send gift payments, recharge prepaid mobile connections, and buy airline tickets using text messages, voice calls or the Internet. The service has 5 million subscribers and works across different handsets and carriers, a spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
Bean users purchase vouchers to load value into the mobile-wallet account. Vouchers range in denominations of 100 rupees to 1,000 rupees, the spokesperson says. “Users can also link their credit cards to reload their Beam accounts,” he says.
Suvidha Starnet will secure the funds from foreign investors and use them to expand Beam’s base in India to 10 million subscribers by March 2012, according to the spokesperson.
The company will invest into expanding its acceptance network, which stands at 50,000 retailers and 20,000 registered merchants, he says, declining to disclose details.
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